Not every parastatal will be sold, Ichung'wah says
National
By
Esther Nyambura
| Dec 07, 2023
National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung'wah has said that not all government parastatals that are up for privatization will be sold.
Speaking on Spice FM on Thursday, December 7, Ichung'wah said some will be leased while others will be open for Initial Public Offering (IPO) among other options.
"There are many ways of privatizing things apart from selling them. When you talk about privatization we can have things like an IPO where Kenyans are given priority to buy shares and still derive greater value," said the Kikuyu MP.
His remarks come weeks after the Treasury listed several government entities as potential investment opportunities for interested parties to raise additional revenue.
Ichung'wah said the government is spending a lot of money on maintaining and running these parastatals and gaining peanuts in return and therefore, privatizing some of them will be beneficial to the country's economy.
"We are gobbling hundreds of billions in running parastatals that the government has no business running. KICC for example ought to be giving money to the exchequer and not the government putting money into it," he said.
However, Ichung'wah urged Kenyans to give the government time to plan which entity will be up for sale and which one will not as not all of them will be sold.
"Kenyans need to wait for the privatization program to be done so that we can authoritatively say we want to sell off this or that parastatal using this model or whether we want to lease, do an IPO or have private investors," said Ichung'wah.
Some of the listed parastatals include the Kenya Literature Bureau (KLB), Mwea Rice Mills Ltd (MRM), Western Kenya Rice Mills Ltd (WKRM) and the New Kenya Cooperative Creameries Limited (NKCC)
Others are Numerical Machining Complex Limited (NMC), the Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers Limited, Kenya Seed Company Limited and Rivatex East Africa.