Budget office regards agriculture highly
By Noel.Wandera, April 14, 2023
Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) considers the agriculture sector as a key enabler to ease Kenya’s fiscal consolidation pressure and beat the high cost of living and drought as global economic shocks slap hard.
This belief is grounded on the belief that investing in agriculture will lead the economic recovery is predicated by the fact that it offers the quickest payback period for investments and in many cases, there is no new capital investment required.
Increasing production only requires addressing the cost, quality and availability of inputs and providing farmers with the working capital to buy an adequate supply of the inputs and direct production expenses such as ploughing of land and labour.
According to the PBO, over Sh26.95 billion will be required to transform agriculture through the expansion of the agricultural input subsidy programme which will require Sh15 billion and target 200,000 metric tonnes of subsidised fertilizer and farm inputs.
The PBO has proposed a raft of measures which include an allocation of Sh1.5 billion for the provision of extension services, Sh300 million to ensure the full implementation and operationalisation of the Warehouse Receipt Systems (WRS) and Sh200 million for procurement of mobile grain driers or grain drying centres and cold storage systems at the community level, especially where WRS is not accessible.
The PBO has also recommended an annual allocation of Sh50 million to each county towards investment in small-scale irrigation infrastructure in the agricultural zones for agricultural production and Sh7.2 billion credit to farmers through well-managed farmer organizations or cooperatives. “The actualization of the warehousing receipt system will also play a critical role in credit provision,’ said Martin Masinde, PBO’s acting Director.