The Ruto administration built nearly 555 more kilometres of roads than planned in the year to June after the government started clearing a backlog of contractor debts, triggering progress in projects which had stalled for years.
Data from the State Department for Roads says the country’s three road agencies completed 761.25 kilometres of roads against a target of 206.35 kilometres, exceeding the goal by 268.91 percent.
The new road network delivered by the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura) and Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) marked the biggest overachievement in recent years, although the target was the most modest seen in more than a decade.
The additional kilometres done in the year to June 2025, however, forms a fraction of what the country was building before the fiscal year 2022/23, underscoring President William Ruto’s major shift from heavy investments undertaken by his predecessors.
Officials in the Roads department told the National Treasury in a report that the output exceeded expectations due to release of delayed Interim Payment Certificates (IPCs) — documents which enable contractors to get payments for parts of the projects which they have finished.
The partial payments helped unlock a number of dormant projects that contractors had abandoned largely because of cash flow challenges.
“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,” Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo said on May 14 during an interview on Fixing the Nation programme on NTV.
“In the 2015 Economic Survey [which covered performance for 2024], you will see that the sector was basically dead. Now we are reviving it,”
The increased construction of new roads coincided with reduction in pending bills for the roads, the first in five years.
The stock of unpaid invoices dropped to Sh128.36 billion at the end of June 2025 from a record Sh166.76 billion the previous year, but still signals financial stress within the road infrastructure portfolio.
“Target for [2024/25] overachieved due to settlement of outstanding Interim Payment Certificates (IPCs),” the Roads department wrote in the Sector Budget Proposal Report for financial year 2026/27 to the National Treasury.
Upon taking power, Dr Ruto expressed shock at Sh900 billion in commitments for the roads sector in the budget he inherited from former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime (for the financial year ended June 2023).
“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,” the Kenyan leader said on May 14, 2023.
Before 2022/23, the three road agencies were delivering more than 1,500 kilometres a year on average. In contrast, output plunged to 495 kilometres in 2022/23 and 542 kilometres in 2023/24, reflecting the impact of fiscal tightening, project rationalisation and swelling arrears which forced contractors to abandon sites.
The rebound to 761km last fiscal year is less than half of what Kenya built during the years leading up to the transition to the current administration in September 2022.
The data suggests that the roads sector remains far from its historical peak capacity, despite the headline overperformance.
Government arrears to contractor arrears—largely unpaid IPCs for completed works—have ballooned in the last half a decade, rising from Sh40.93 billion in 2019/20 to a record Sh166.76 billion in 2023/24.
The partial relief last financial year explains why contractors returned to sites and complete suspended works.
In a bid to tame inflation of contract costs and cut wastage of taxpayer money, Dr Ruto administration in November approved a ‘Comprehensive Framework for Infrastructure Projects Pricing’ to standardise pricing of public infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, dams, electricity plants and transmission lines.
The framework seeks to eliminate the irregular, inconsistent, and costly practices that have characterised the pricing of government infrastructure projects,” read a dispatch from the Cabinet following a meeting on November 11.
“It aims to establish a data-driven system for determining infrastructure costs, ensuring accountability and prudent use of public resources.”
