Kenya Power says annual capital expenditure to fall 16pc
Kenya Power chief executive Ben Chumo. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU
What you need to know:
Firm says it had been adding customers at a rate of 30 per cent a year for the past three years and has 4.89 million customers connected to the grid.
Kenya Power, the country's sole electricity distributor, said on Monday it expected capital expenditure to fall 16 per cent in its current financial year as it spends less on maintaining its grid.
The company said capital expenditure was likely to fall to Sh42 billion ($9.9 million) in its financial year to the end of June 2017 from 50 billion a year earlier.
"We expect that as we increase access to connectivity, we will as well expand the network, but (expenditure) is not as high as the point where we were expanding the network, together with maintaining or refurbishing existing networks," Ken Tarus, Kenya Power's general manager for finance, told a briefing.
Last month, the company reported a pre-tax profit for the full year to the end of June 2016 of Sh12.1 billion, a fall of 1.4 per cent due to the rising costs linked to its expanding its transmission network.
Kenya Power said it had been adding customers at a rate of 30 per cent a year for the past three years and had 4.89 million customers connected to the grid at the end June, giving 60 per cent of the population access to electricity.
Kenya has been racing to increase access to electricity to support economic expansion by slashing connection charges for new customers.
