Kenyans Defaulted 27 Billion Shillings Electricity Bills

Kenya Power’s financial statements for the fiscal year to June 2022 show Kenyans owe the firm 27.3 billion shillings worth of electricity that they consumed during the period.

County governments, ministries, departments and agencies, parastatals, industrial customers, and household users especially those fitted with postpaid meters accounted for most of this debt.

Kenya Power said some 14.3 billion shillings had not been paid for more than three months to June, while 2.11 billion shillings stood unpaid for between 30 days and 90 days. Meanwhile, 10.7 billion shillings stood unpaid for less than 30 days pushing the company into financial difficulties.

Kenya power has now written off some 14.9 billion shillings of the total outstanding debt with 60 percent of the outstanding debt owed by domestic customers, 30 percent by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and 10 percent by big firms.

Kenya power has been struggling with debts for decades with the company now seeking measures to avert the issue. It is estimated that the company loses almost 4 billion shillings annually due to power thefts and poor power collection mechanisms.

In 2020, the firm reported a loss of 939 million shillings which was the highest loss they had made in two decades. The company was forced to write off 15 billion shillings in bad debts from unpaid electricity bills, most of which had been outstanding for more than three months.

Kenya Power is betting on government support to recover billions of shillings from public sector debtors. Last year, it cut such losses by 1.5 percent due to the installation of smart meters and additional substations. Smart metering gives it the ability to remotely switch off defaulting customers through automated surveillance technology.

The utility firm is now seeking to roll out 75,000 smart meters for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the current fiscal year after a 2 billion shillings tender was cleared last month. This will bring the cumulative installed Smart meters for SMEs to 142,000.

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