United Nations launches Sh5.3 bn food appeal for Kenya
Article paru dans la presse kenyane de ce jour
The United Nations is seeking Sh5.3 billion to deal with food shortages occasioned by expensive farm inputs and post-election violence in Kenya.
The World Food Programme – the UN agency concerned with food security in the world – has appealed for the funds to feed 1.2 million Kenyans, a fraction of them victims of the conflict after the disputed results of the December 27 elections. “We launched an appeal last week for $84 million for operations in Kenya throughout the year,” said Mr Marcus Prior, the agency’s spokesperson for East and Central Africa.
The appeal follows an assessment last month of the violence that claimed at least 1,200 lives and displaced 350,000 others in parts of Rift Valley, Western and Central provinces.
“We did look at the planting season but it’s rather too early to make an assessment. Obviously, there has been disruption (in planting) in the Rift Valley Province,” he said in reference to the region, largely considered Kenya’s food basket but which was scoured by chaos last January. “We will carry out (another) assessment later in the year.”
The appeal comes as the world is facing a food crisis that WFP executive director Josette Sheeran calls the “silent tsunami” in reference to the tidal wave caused by sea quake and that often kills scores of people and causes damage worth millions of shillings.
Reports from parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and South America show that food scarcity is causing civil strife. The shortages result from expensive agricultural inputs (such as fertiliser) caused by escalating oil prices, and a move by the developed world to divert grains to make ethanol (the inexpensive alternative to petroleum).
“It’s more profitable to make fuel (from maize) than to make food,” says Dr Juma Mukhwana, the executive director of Sacred Africa, a non-governmental organization involved in food security and commodity exchange prices in rural Kenya.
According to the Centre for International Cooperation’s Alex Evans, “global food prices have risen by 80 per cent in the last three years”. In Kenya, the shortages are evident in the doubling of prices of essential foods, including milk, flour and rice.
Yet the country’s problem is worsened by the post-election fighting that displaced more than 100,000 farmers from their land to camps, according to Mr Paul Mbuni, the chairperson of the 8,000-member Kenya Society for Agricultural Professionals (KESAP).
“There will be a drastic decline in production of maize and wheat,” said Mr Mbuni. “We expect a maize shortfall of eight million bags this year.”
As authorities worry over the shortfall, reports indicate that Kenya’s strategic food reserves are getting depleted fast as the Government feeds the 350,000 people displaced by the election conflict. “Of course the fact is that since January when clashes began, the Government has accessed a lot of food to the IDPs,” says Mr Kipserem Maritim, the spokesperson of National Cereals and Produce Board, the country’s grain store. “This has impacted on our reserves.”
According to Agriculture minister William Ruto, the country has 3.5 million bags reserved at the NCPB for emergency. This is enough to feed the country until August, he said four days ago.
Kenyans consume 32 million bags of maize per year. Last year, 36 million bags of maize were produced meaning there was a surplus of about 4 million bags.
Now the Government seeks to mop up the extra grain still in farmers’ hands. “We believe there are farmers out there holding onto food. We are appealing to them to bring it to us because we have the infrastructure and facilities to preserve the grain,” Mr Maritim says. As yet, the board cannot quantify the maize still held by farmers. However, the response to the appeal has been “low” says Mr Maritim.
Commodity prices analysts say the response could be poor because maize farmers may be disposing of the produce to agents who are paying better than the Sh1,300 a bag offered by the NCPB.
Salvage crops
At the same time, the Government has no plans to import cereals to counter the looming food shortage in the country, the Saturday Nation has established.
Instead, the Agriculture ministry is pegging hope on unharvested food crops in Kenya and neighboring Tanzania.
“We expect maize harvests from Tanzania in June and from parts of Rift Valley and Western provinces in July,” said permanent secretary Romano Kiome.
While acknowledging dwindling food stocks in the country, Dr Kiome said cereals in Canada, America and Australia were also selling at high prices. It will, therefore, mean the Government will have to exhaust all options possible before it can seek international imports. “We are keen on cross-border imports; it will be cheaper this way,” said the PS.
Early this week, the Agriculture minister raised the red flag and said local food reserves could only last until August. This means Kenyans risk starvation in coming months if no decisive measures are taken soon. Already residents in some parts of Rift Valley like
Samburu and West Pokot districts are experiencing food shortages.
The Government has laid down strategies to ensure productivity of food crops already in farms is enhanced while still facilitating planting of others. Farmers are set to be given top dressing (CAN) fertilizer to salvage crops planted in April.
Internal refugees
Since the onset of long rains in February, the Government has distributed 350 tonnes of free seeds to internal refugees. “We are also seeking a way in which Kenya Seed Company can reduce seed prices by around 40 per cent,” said Dr Kiome.
The PS further said the ministry had also distributed 21 tonnes of fertiliser to farmers especially in Rift Valley and assisted in ploughing 4,000 acres for free. “We are also helping them get farm tools. So far we have given them 14,000 tools,” said Dr Kiome.
Maize and rice production was high in the last five years, but the gains made were reversed by post-election chaos. “About 3.5 million bags of maize were either burnt or destroyed during the violence hence the deficit,” says Dr Kiome.
Society - Exposed: Where all your money goes
Lu dans la presse kenyane de ce jour
The most expensive item on my pay slip is not food, transport, school fees or beer. It not even those things over which the governor of the State of New York recently lost his job. The most expensive item on my pay slip is the government of the African Republic of Kenya.
First, the government takes an outright one third in direct taxes. If I spend my whole salary on goods and services, it means, taking into account 16 per cent VAT, 46 per cent of my salary goes to the government. Keeping in mind that there are many more taxes, it is safe to assume that I work 14-hour days and hand over two-thirds of my pay cheque to the government.
IT IS THEREFORE IMMORAL TO SEE SOME sub-literate thug strutting around spending all that money and having no respect for me, the man who has to work to keep his mistresses in expensive underwear, his children in good schools and the gas tanks of the juggernauts I have bought him full of fuel.
If this government does not spend our money with more care and show us more tangible benefits for it, including a tax cut, I shall be among the first to join a middle class revolution against it.
So you can imagine how excited I was by a story in the Daily Telegraph published under the headline “Kenya’s cabinet soaks up 80pc of the budget”. It was based on an interview with Mwalimu Mati, former director of Transparency International and head of the Mars Group, who campaigns against corruption.
“Kenya’s expanded new government,” the story read, “will spend 80 per cent of the entire national budget on luxury vehicles, inflated salaries for ministers and general running costs, a local anti-corruption group claimed on Wednesday.
“Of Kenya’s annual budget of £5.4 billion, more than £4.3 billion will go on 93 ministers and their government’s general running costs. Only £1.3 billion will be left for roads, schools and hospitals for Kenya’s 38 million people.”
For a moment there I thought the paper was reporting that 80 per cent of the budget this year will go to buying and maintaining Hummers. Don’t sue me, but I think the report is looking at the two halves of spending that the government does, recurrent and development. Recurrent are the expenses paid over and over, including wages and fuel for Hummers. Development is, well, development.
Not satisfied, I probed a little more and came across a document Kenyans should see. It is called Quarterly Economic and Budgetary Review; the most recent covers the last quarter of 2007 (You can find it at http://www.treasury.go.ke). It tells you what the government spent your salary on. In general, the government spends very little money on development. The bulk of the resources of this country go to debt payments and government expenses. That is why it is so nonsensical to create a government of 42 ministries, complete with 50 assistant ministers and of course 42 permanent secretaries. It’s flushing money down the chute, just to keep Moi-era politicians happy and away from the throats of poor villagers.
The books of the government for the last quarter of 2007, that is June to December, were actually not bad, I hate to admit. Sh167 billion went to recurrent expenses against only Sh64 billion for development. But this is generally good given that the previous year expenditure on development was just about half of that.
Secondly, the government has either become a little more frugal, or ministries are asking for more money than they have use for. In general, during that quarter the government spent Sh21.9 billion less than it expected, which is a good and bad thing depending on what was supposed to be done and wasn’t.
THE RECURRENT EXPENSES ACCOUNT was underspent by Sh52.5 billion, which is very good, assuming that this was a saving rather than things not getting done. The development account was overspent by Sh30.5 billion, which is a good thing, provided all that money went to development. Problem is, I don’t know that it was. The ministry of Finance alone overspent its development budget by Sh36 billion, and until I know what the money was spent on, it is impossible to render judgment. Given that only Sh64 billion was spent on development in that quarter, half of it was absorbed by the ministry’s overexpenditure, which is mighty suspicious.
Two important things: The government owes Sh836.4 billion, half of it to foreigners. Foreign debt service for the quarter in question was close to Sh9 billion.
Another thing is that the entire recurrent budget does not go to juggernauts; in that quarter, Sh10 billion was directed to uses that the government claims are intended to fight poverty which, I guess, is a good thing.
I suggest that we all watch this government like a hawk. It must spend money with care, and it must identify the priorities that have direct effect on our lives. Wherever I talk to people, the message I get is that the country will go back to the days of big deals and big looting. We need to keep an eye on this.