State maps 500,000 shops to sell cheap imported food

upepo

upepo

Elder Lister
By GERALD ANDAE

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The Ministry of Trade has mapped 500,000 retail shops in the country where cheap imported foodstuff will be stocked as the government targets to ease the cost of living that pushed inflation to 9.2 percent in February. Trade Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria told the Business Daily that the Kenya National Trading Corporation (KNTC) has identified the shops that will benefit from this programme. Mr Kuria said the ministry’s estimates show the cost of basic food commodities will decrease by at least 30 percent under this duty-free import scheme.

Mr Kuria said KNTC, which is importing the foodstuff, will sell these commodities directly to the shops that have been mapped out, hence reducing the long value chain that eventually makes the goods expensive. “We have already mapped out the shops that will benefit from this programme. These are shops that serve the majority of Kenyans, especially in the low-income regions,” said Mr Kuria. Kenya Revenue Authority issued an exemption on duty to KNTC for the importation of 125,000 tonnes of cooking oil, 25,000 tonnes of rice, 80,000 tonnes of beans, 200,000 tonnes of sugar and 150,000 tonnes of rice.

This is in addition to the previous duty exemption on 100,000 tonnes of sugar, 100,000 tonnes of rice and 900,000 tonnes of maize, which was issued in November last year. The CS said this is a stopgap measure to address the high cost of living and that it will go on for the next one year when the country would have fully addressed the matter. “This programme will run for a year as we are currently addressing the high cost of production through subsidy of key commodities to farmers such as fertiliser, by next year we shall be self-sufficient,” he said.

Mr Kuria said KNTC has secured credit from international and local banks to facilitate the imports of these commodities. Though he did not disclose the name of the local banks, Mr Kuria said Egypt’s Afreximbank was just one of the institutions that they had approached to enable KNTC to guarantee sufficient importation of these key commodities. Kenya’s inflation in February edged up for the first time in four months on renewed pressure on food and cooking gas prices, the statistics agency has reported. Inflation — a measure of the cost of living over the last 12 months— rose to 9.2 percent from 9.0 percent the month before, the first rise since October.

The government is using KNTC as an anchor agency in its quest to lower the cost of basic commodities as it seeks to stabilise the runaway price of goods on the shelf, which has seen a two-kilo packet of sugar retail at Sh312 with maize flour of similar quantity going for Sh200.

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upepo said:
benefit from this programme. These are shops that serve the majority of Kenyans, especially in the low-income regions,” said Mr Kuria. Kenya Revenue Authority issued an exemption
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so they have identified low income regions ,how will they ensure only low income earners get the commodities ?
 
zapp_brannigan said:
so they have identified low income regions ,how will they ensure only low income earners get the commodities ?
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These are things that previous governments should have anticipated. The huduma namba should have had additional fields to capture such information. As the situation stands now, the whole thing will be a flop unless high levels of transparency are enforced through the use of technology. I would have advised them to make use of Mpesa services where all purchases by distributors and end customers are made through Mpesa with special codes for specific commodities. This way, the flow of goods to the end user can be verified and irregularities would be easy to detect. Without such measures, the whole thing will benefit those who don't need help.
 
upepo said:
These are things that previous governments should have anticipated. The huduma namba should have had additional fields to capture such information. As the situation stands now, the whole thing will be a flop unless high levels of transparency are enforced through the use of technology. I would have advised them to make use of Mpesa services where all purchases by distributors and end customers are made through Mpesa with special codes for specific commodities. This way, the flow of goods to the end user can be verified and irregularities would be easy to detect. Without such measures, the whole thing will benefit those who don't need help.
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Your method is too complex.
If the idea was to stabilize prices then walete mzigo wauzie retailers direct from depot za KNTC and NCPB (ya Nyahurururu ishaafanywa supermarket!).
 
Mwalimu-G said:
Your method is too complex.
If the idea was to stabilize prices then walete mzigo wauzie retailers direct from depot za KNTC and NCPB (ya Nyahurururu ishaafanywa supermarket!).
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The problem is that if you sell to retailers, there is no way of telling what they do with the products. And since the demand is higher than the supply, and we are a rotten society, it means there is a high possibility of product diversion to people who can pay more. Profiteers will always try to benefit from the situation. Products will be repackaged and all that, denying deserving cases the opportunity to benefit from the program.

If the payment is done using Mpesa, it means every kilogram of rice sold to the end user can be traced all the way to KNTC or NCPB and beyond. And since people are accustomed to paying with Mpesa, this should not present any barrier.

In addition, you do not need come up with any new technology. All the required elements can simply be pulled from the Mpesa database. The sellers already have till numbers that identify them, and the buyers have unique phone numbers. All you need is special codes for the different products. With such a system, you can even limit how much product a customer can purchase or even block numbers with suspicious activities.
 
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An entity that exists in name only wants to distribute 600,000 tonnes of food and do it at a cheaper rate than existing channels.
Mahali watatuchenga ni hiyo definition ya low income, if your kijiji duni receives no supplies utaambiwa your area is classified as high income
 
upepo said:
These are things that previous governments should have anticipated. The huduma namba should have had additional fields to capture such information. As the situation stands now, the whole thing will be a flop unless high levels of transparency are enforced through the use of technology. I would have advised them to make use of Mpesa services where all purchases by distributors and end customers are made through Mpesa with special codes for specific commodities. This way, the flow of goods to the end user can be verified and irregularities would be easy to detect. Without such measures, the whole thing will benefit those who don't need help.
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Maybe you can do a database to track payments, but how do you track prices, if a guy was supposed to sell a kg of unga @ 100, how do you ensure the 100 bob you are tracking is not for 750grams
 
shocks said:
An entity that exists in name only wants to distribute 600,000 tonnes of food and do it at a cheaper rate than existing channels.
Mahali watatuchenga ni hiyo definition ya low income, if your kijiji duni receives no supplies utaambiwa your area is classified as high income
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Wataita media Mombasa waonyeshwe meli Moja waambiwe ndio imeleta the food then that is it.
 
shocks said:
Maybe you can do a database to track payments, but how do you track prices, if a guy was supposed to sell a kg of unga @ 100, how do you ensure the 100 bob you are tracking is not for 750grams
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Exactly. A simple database extracted from safaricom would do. To simplify the accounting, the items would be distributed packaged in standardized quantities such as 1 kg rice packets at 200 bob, 1 litre cooking oil at 100 bob, 2 kg maize flour at 150 bob etc. This way, it will be easy to publicize the prices to citizens. If a shopper pays 200 bob to the rice 'paybill' and 300 bob to the maize flour 'paybill,' that registers as 1 kg of rice and 2 kg of maize flour.

But, of course, no system can be 100 percent foolproof. There will always be people looking for loopholes. The objective here is to reduce instances of failure and benefit the most people. With such a system, it would be easy to monitor progress in real time and take action where hiccups arise. For instance, if the database shows that a shopkeeper has not offloaded his entire stock of rice, then they cannot buy more supplies of the same. Similarly, if a shopkeeper demands extra cash payment from customers, which is certain to happen, it would be easy to confirm it and gather witnesses using the transaction data for action. If a shopkeeper has collected products but no sales reflect on the database, the chief or other entity can be dispatched to check. And of course, there would be a hotline to report malpractices.
 
upepo said:
To simplify the accounting, the items would be distributed packaged in standardized quantities such as 1 kg rice packets at 200 bob, 1 litre cooking oil at 100 bob, 2 kg maize flour at 150 bob etc.
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The ships coming in are bulk carries. The jangilis running this show are not interested in accountability
 
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shocks said:
The ships comimg in are bulk carries. The jangilis running this show are not interested in accountability
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Hapa sasa ndio shida iko. The businesses that have been bypassed will not sit idly as they miss out on the profits. Watajaribu juu chini kufaidika na hii situation. The have the money to compromise everyone.
 
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