Keroche Breweries has been shut down again. This follows yet another failed tax repayment plan with the Kenya Revenue Authority.
According to Keroche chief executive officer Tabitha Karanja, the business is unable to honour the tax repayment plan it entered into with KRA and needs a restructuring of the payment plan. Ms. Karanja says that Keroche had been pressured into the repayment plan which it is now unable to keep up with.
“I specifically request once more to be given a moratorium on the enforcement action that shut down our operations, and on the unsustainable payment plan that we agreed to under unbearable pressure,” Ms. Karanja said.
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“I therefore also humbly request for further engagement to consider a way for the company to meet its due obligations without sacrificing it and the livelihoods of countless Kenyan households.”
The agreement Keroche has breached had been agreed at and signed on March 14, 2022. In the agreement, Keroche agreed to pay Sh. 957 million to the tax authority in a period of 24 months starting January 2022.
“The addendum agreement which sets the stage for the reopening for production of the Naivasha based brewery will see Keroche settle an undisputed tax amount of Sh. 957,000,000 over a period of twenty-four (24) months starting from January 2022,” KRA said in a statement.
As part of the agreement, KRA lifted all the notices it had instituted against Keroche with 36 banks. Agency Notices are commonly issued by KRA to banks holding deposits on behalf of a tax payer and result in the bank freezing such funds. These agency notices had crippled Keroche’s ability to run its operations.
The KRA further said that the rest of the taxes owed by the brewer would be dealt with as agreed by the parties in the Alternative Dispute Resolution Agreements signed in 2021.
The taxman shut down the brewer over Sh. 332 million tax arrears in early March 2022. The shut down was expected to result in hundreds of workers losing their jobs at the factory.