Charcoal, kerosene prices hit the poor amid stalled gas bid

The cost of kerosene and charcoal has nearly doubled in four years, hitting poor homes the hardest on the back of a botched roll-out of an affordable cooking gas plan.

An analysis of Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) data for the first nine months of the year shows low-income households are digging deeper into their pockets to afford the two sources of fuel they largely use for cooking and lighting.

Kerosene prices surged 95.85 percent to an average of Sh102.02 per litre in the January-September 2019 period compared to Sh52.09 in a similar period in 2016, while a four-kilogramme tin of charcoal jumped 82.32 percent to Sh143.63.

This comes amid June 2018 suspension of the implementation of State-funded cooking gas subsidy plan aimed at cutting reliance on kerosene, charcoal and firewood, which are not environment-friendly.

The KNBS statistics indicate that homes using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking spend more or less the same amount of money to refill their cylinders like they did four years ago. Refilling a 13-kilogramme cylinder, for instance, cost homes an average of Sh2,178.70, a marginal drop of 1.45 percent, or Sh32.12, compared to Sh2,210.82 in the January-September period of 2016.

Under the Mwananchi Gas Project, more than four million households were to be supplied with six-kilo cooking gas cylinders and burners at a discounted price of Sh2,000 in three years, with refills costing Sh840.

The project was, however, suspended in June 2018, a month after the Treasury had allocated Sh2 billion towards the purchase of the cylinders, dubbed Gas Yetu, in the financial year starting July 2018, following the initial Sh1 billion budget a year earlier.

The spike in paraffin prices, used to power cookstoves and lanterns by poor homes as well as pockets of small-scale fishermen, is largely linked to September 2018’s imposition of Sh18 levy to deter use of the fuel to adulterate diesel.