Annual public investment in construction and upgrade of roads has grown for the first time since President William Ruto took power nearly three years ago, buoyed by cash inflows from funds backed by fuel levy charged on motorists, fresh exchequer numbers show.
The data, published by Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi last Friday, indicates expenditure on roads and related infrastructure, such as bridges jumped by more than half (57.77 percent) in the financial year ended June 2025 to Sh64.02 billion.
The climb, the fastest since the financial year ended June 2020, ended two years of consecutive cuts on the cash wired to road projects from the government’s main account, the exchequer.
The data shows funding of road projects directly from the exchequer slowed from Sh75.14 billion in the final financial year of the former administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta in June 2022 to Sh52.48 billion for the year that followed, and further to Sh40.58 billion in the fiscal year ended June 2024.
This was after works on a majority of the road projects initiated by Mr Kenyatta’s regime were either scaled back or stopped when Ruto took power in September 2022.
But the impact of reduced funding for roads, which had dipped to the lowest levels in more than a decade during the first part of last fiscal year, was felt by motorists who decried worsening condition of major roads.
Growing complaints over the impact of stalled road projects on slowing access to markets prompted the Ruto administration to resume works by entering into repayment plans with contractors whose claims were validated by the Pending Bills Verification Committee, led by former Auditor-General Edward Ouko.
The Kenya Roads Board (KRB), the sector regulator, started clearing pending bills for road contractors in the fourth quarter using a short-term loan from commercial banks, dubbed a bridge facility, secured by the Road Maintenance Levy Fund.
Contractors accepted state terms to reduce the interest charged on the delayed payments by 35 percent, translating to savings of Sh7 billion.
“You may have seen that contractors are back on site. In fact, you will see the contraction of the construction sector [in 2024] now start being positive in GDP. In the 2015 Economic Survey, you will see that the sector was basically dead. Now we are reviving it,” Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo said on May 14 during an interview on Nation Media Group’s Fixing the Nation show.
To ensure funding for road projects is not interrupted going forward, lawmakers in June adopted a Cabinet report that enables KRB to allocate Sh12 of the Sh25 of the RMLF, or fuel levy, charged per litre of diesel and petrol to compensate investors in planned road bonds.
Ruto, who served as a deputy in the previous regime had previously expressed shock at “Sh900 billion in commitments for the roads” he inherited when he took office.
The President said at the time discussions with chiefs of the three State-run road agencies — Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura), and Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) — managed to cut the funding commitments by about a quarter.
“We have tried to cut it down; we have tried to cut some of the roads that have not started. But we still remain with about Sh680 billion that we have to manage,” Dr Ruto said on May 14, 2023.
Data from the State Department for Roads showed that the government constructed 1,037 kilometres of roads in two financial years through June 2024, which was 68.67 percent short of the 3,310km built in the previous two years under the former administration of Uhuru Kenyatta.
