Kenya is cutting the retail price of electricity by 7% and removing fixed charges to cushion its 3.6 million low-income customers, the energy regulator said on Monday.
Getting rid of fixed charges is meant to ensure customers only pay for power they consume and simplify bills, Kenya’s Energy Regulatory Commission said on Twitter, Reuters reported.
“There have been numerous complaints by electricity customers on the complexity of the tariff regime ... The billing has not been fully understood,” the regulator said, adding that the change followed a review of a tariff in place since 2013.
The approved tariff from this month to the end of June 2019 lowers the retail price to 16.64 shillings per kilowatt hour from 17.87 shillings in the 2017 to 2018 period, it said.
Kenya, which has more than 6.5 million customers connected to the power grid, has an installed generation capacity of 2,351 megawatts with peak demand of 1,802 MW, it said in June.
Industrial customers such as manufacturers operating in special economic zones will also get an average reduction of 4% in addition to a previous 50% cut in their night time electricity tariff. This is meant to boost economic growth by making energy costs competitive compared with other African nations such as Ethiopia, South Africa and Egypt.
Kenya’s government has been trying to boost investment in the manufacturing sector in recent years, including the opening of light vehicle assembly plants by Peugeot and Volkswagen.
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