Outdoor advertising companies are likely to lose millions as Nairobi County government this week began pulling down the billboards of those that have not paid the requisite fees.
County Executive in charge of Land and Urban Planning Wachira Njuguna said the companies owe City Hall Sh234 million in accrued advertising fees while small business owners owe unspecified amounts in signage fees. Small business will have the signages removed from next Monday.
“We launched the campaign on Monday to make people pay all the outstanding signage fees for both the small formats and billboards. They owe us Sh234 million, which is only within a year,” said Mr Njuguna.
Mr Njuguna said the county would blacklist the defaulting companies and deny them the chance to transact business in its jurisdiction by engaging directly with those who seek their services.
“We want to blacklist them and call on all their customers to stop giving them business and instead pay us directly. We will also deny them a chance to put billboards in the city,” he said.
Outdoor companies are required to pay Sh1.3 million for each big billboard and between Sh20,000 and Sh50,000 for the small ones per year.
“They are evaders of licence fees. We are supposed to raise about Sh2 billion from the advertisers, but we get a paltry Sh700 million so they take away from the county government Sh1.3 billion,” said Mr Njuguna.
He said that the defaulting companies had been taking advantage of shortage of personnel in the Monitoring department to evade payment.
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