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Treasury gives KPCU Sh5 billion sales target by June next year

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Agriculture Cabinet Peter Munya. FILE PHOTO | NMG

The Treasury has given the Kenya Planters' Co-operative Union (KPCU) a target of Sh5 billion sales by June next year, marking a reversal of an initial plan to liquidate the coffee organisation.

The target is to double the amount marketed in the following year to Sh10 billion and raise it again to Sh20 billion by June 2023, according to budget documents release to Parliament last week.

Last year, Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya as head of the Trade and Industrialisation docket had announced an intention to liquidate the debt-ridden firm. Last August, acting commissioner for Co-operative Development Geoffrey Njang'ombe went on to issue a notice in the Kenya Gazette on the same, an exercise that would start with an independent assessment of the financial health of the company to be followed by disposal of assets.

Mr Njang'ombe even picked a team of four officials to oversee the liquidation to be completed in six months, a period that was supposed to have ended in February this year.

The reversal of the policy as outline in the Programme-Based Budget (PBB) raises questions as to whether the government intends to change the management of the company or whether it will be allocated cash in the course of the year. No specific allocation is indicated in the PBB as having been set aside for the company apart from the Sh2.7 billion it received in February this year for onward lending to farmers.

KPCU's revival is part of coffee sector improvement programme being pursued by the State Department for Co-operatives including lending farmers' money for cherry.