The government has announced plans to privatize Kenya’s oldest milk processor, Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC) as part of addressing farmer’s payments and productivity.
According to the CS for Co-operative and SMEs Wycliffe Oparanya, the milk processing giant was struggling to pay farmers and affecting their productivity.
He noted KCC owed farmers millions in milk supplies for the last couple of months adding that the government was working to clear the debts.
“KCC is currently struggling to pay farmers for milk supplied and the government is working on a privatisation programme to solve these challenges,” he said.
The CS was Speaking during the 4th annual Co-operative and SMEs conference in Naivasha where he announced a raft of measures to support the Cooperative sector.
He said that the Ministry had suspended the registration of more Saccos as many of them were not viable and were facing financial challenges.
“There is always an upsurge of new Saccos every election cycle and many later die and we have been summoned by the Senate on this issue and we are ready to defend it,” he said.
Oparanya said that the Ministry was keen to amend the Saccos Society Act 2008 as part of addressing challenges in the sector and aligning them to the new constitution.
Addressing delegates, the CS was optimistic that the Cooperative Bill which has been pending for over 15 years would be enacted into law by March next year.
“Once enacted into law, this bill will address the issues of governance and mismanagement of funds which has been a challenge to the sector,” he said.
On coffee, he said that the sector was on its recovery path with plans to increase production from the current 50,000 metric tonnes to 150,000 metric tonnes by 2029.
On his part, the PS for Co-operative Patrick Kilemi noted of the over 30,000 Cooperative saccos in the country, only 4,900 had filed returns in the last three years.
He said that the Ministry would start expunging the rest from their records as they had failed to follow the law and were operating against the Cooperative regulations.
“Some of these Saccos have failed to file audited returns for years and have ignored directives from the Ministry and its time we acted,” he said.
The Commissioner for Co-operatives David Obonyo said that the Commission was keen to support the sector as one way of increasing productivity.
“The coffee sector is currently doing well with farmers after many years getting very good pay and we shall support other sectors in increasing productivity,” he said.
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