Ruto drops over 3,000km of road planned by Uhuru
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Ruto drops over 3,000km of road planned by former Uhuru Kenya in a strategy to do away with predecessor’s priorities
Ruto drops over 3,000km of road planned by former Uhuru Kenya in a strategy to do away with predecessor’s priorities.
Over 3,000 kilometers of roads that former President Uhuru Kenyatta had planned to construct during the current fiscal year were canceled by President William Ruto, signaling a departure for the new administration from the goals of its predecessor.
The budget for government infrastructure projects was cut by Sh47.3 billion during the fiscal year ending in June 2023, with road building suffering the majority of the cuts (99%).
A minimum of 1,089 km of new road construction around the nation is proposed to be abandoned by the government in the mini-budget released in January, along with 2,304 km of planned road maintenance and rehabilitation for the fiscal year ending in June.
Among key roads that had been planned for construction but have now been largely scaled down include the dualling of the Thika-Kenol-Marua road, the construction of Arusha-Holili-Voi road, and the construction of the Mau Mau Road.
In the original 2022/2023 budget, Mr. Kenyatta’s last in office, his government planned the dualling of the 27km Thika-Kenol-Marua road, which has been scaled down to 6.5km only in the new budget proposals before parliament.
The previous administration also planned construction of the 49km Mau Mau Road, but in the supplementary budget, this has been brought down to 13km.
Another key road to suffer President Ruto’s budget cut is the Horn of Africa Gateway Development Project, a key road that is expected to link Kenya with Somalia and Ethiopia and boost trade among the three countries.
The previous administration planned to build at least 98km of the road in the financial year to June, but the National Treasury reduced this by 68km.
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Construction of the Kisumu-Miwani-Chemelil-Muhoroni road has been reduced from the originally planned 20km to 5km, while the planned 80km Lokichar Amosing Road will be scaled down by over 93 percent to just five kilometres.
Ngong Road footbridges, which would be 70 percent complete by June as per the 2022/23 original budget, will also take much longer after Treasury scaled-down work on them targeting to achieve just 18 percent in the current financial year.
Treasury in the Supplementary Budget One of 2022/23 cut the total budget to the State Department for Infrastructure from Sh221.3 billion to Sh174 billion.
Attributing the cuts to budget rationalization, about 99 percent of the Treasury’s cut on the funding for road infrastructure projects was on the development side, whose budget was reduced by Sh47.1 billion.
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