State launches Sh2.2bn strategic food reserve fund

A Sh2.2 billion trust fund targeted at building strategic reserves to help stabilise food supply and prices in the country has been set up.

Treasury secretary Henry Rotich said the Strategic Food Reserve Trust Fund will be tasked with procuring and storing adequate stocks of food for sale across the country.

“The object and purpose for which the fund is established is to provide a strategic food reserve in physical stock and cash equivalent and specifically the fund shall stabilise the food supply and prices in the country, arrange for procurement, storage and sale of food commodities, maintain adequate strategic food reserves in physical stock or cash equivalent at any one given time and mobilise resources to support strategic food reserve related activities,” Mr Rotich said.

Currently, the country relies on a strategic food reserve managed by the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) which only stocks maize used for relief emergency supplies.

The food reserve system run by NCPB has, however, proved unreliable over the years partly due to lack of funds and poor planning by its managers.

Cartels have often taken advantage of the present poorly structured strategic national food reserve to manipulate commodity prices.

READ: Farmers left to brokers as NCPB exhausts Sh2.3bn

Mr Rotich said the new Strategic Food Reserve Trust Fund will run by an oversight board comprising a chairperson appointed by the President and Principal Secretaries drawn from the ministries of Agriculture, Interior and Coordination of national government and Devolution.

The board will also have four other members competitively appointed by the Finance minister of which two shall be nominated by registered nongovernmental organisations involved in food security in the country while the other duo shall be persons qualified and competent in the field of finance, accounting, and management or marketing.

Members of the oversight board, including the chairperson, shall hold office for a term of three years, but shall be eligible for re-appointment for a further one term of three years.

In a bid to ensure transparency, the administrator of the Fund will be required to open and operate a bank account at the Central Bank of Kenya or a bank to be approved by the National Treasury, into which all monies raised under Fund shall be paid.

The fund administrator will also be required to prepare and submit reports to the Auditor-General and the Treasury every year.

“The fund administrator shall prepare a quarterly report on the receipts into and issues out of the Fund and submit it to the Cabinet Secretary for gazettement by the 21st of every fourth month,” Mr Rotich further said.