The national treasury has issued a one-year waiver on import duty on seven raw materials used for the manufacture of animal and chicken feeds in an effort to reduce the high costs incurred by farmers. Farmers have been forced to pay more for raw materials, a move that saw animal feeds hit historic highs in august this year.
A 70-kilogram bag of the dairy meal retails at 3,400 shillings, up from 2,500 in August last year. Marsh retails at 4,200 from 3,250 shillings while layers marsh now sells at 3, 800 shilling from 3,100 shillings.
The waiver comes following a directive by President Uhuru Kenyatta to lower the high prices that were passed on to the consumers who were forced to pay more for food items.
Treasury added that the exempted products must not be genetically modified and shall only be used for the production of animal feeds. The waiver applies to imports of yellow maize, soya bean meal, cottonseed cake, white sorghum, fish meal, and sunflower seed cake sourced from the east African region.
Waiver of duty on yellow maize was one of the three measures that the ministry forwarded to the National Treasury.
The country has been experiencing a shortage of eggs due to a hike in the price of chicken feed, leading to an increase in the retail price of the commodity.
This was after Zambia, a key source of animal feed imports to Kenya, banned the exports of soya and sunflower, which are the major raw materials used in feed production.
With the ban, the price of soya rose to Sh130 per kg from Sh65 a year ago, while sunflower increased from Ksh.25 to Ksh 35 per kilo.
