Mattress shortage choking local furniture production
A worker at the Jumbo Foam Mattresses Industries Ltd Kisumu cuts cushions into shape.
A decline in foam mattress production due to tight supply of foam hit furniture producers last year, new data shows.
The Economic Survey 2022 shows that the quantum index for furniture manufacture —a number which shows the changes in quantity, usually of goods or services produced, bought, or sold—dipped to a four-year low of 100.6 points last year, mainly on shortage of mattresses.
Furniture making dropped by 3.6 per cent in 2021 mainly due to a 3.6 per cent decline in mattress production, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said.
Many furniture producers globally were hit by foam shortages in 2021 amid high demand for products such as couches and mattresses as nations gradually pulled out of the economically crippling Covid-19 pandemic.
Shortage of foam, coupled with shipping backlog, saw many leading global furniture makers delay deliveries into this year.
In Kenya, furniture producers have also been hit by tight supplies of timber due to an ongoing ban on logging.
Public outcry
The current moratorium was first imposed in February 2018 following a public outcry over illegal logging that was blamed for diminishing water levels in the country’s key rivers.
It has been renewed every year, with Environment Secretary Keriako Tobiko last year only allowing the Kenya Forestry Service (KFS) to harvest mature forest plantations not exceeding 5,000 hectares.
Power distribution and transmission are among the sectors that the logging ban has hit.
Legislators have proposed an end to a ban on logging in the new financial year starting July to help unlock Sh10 billion revenue for the cash-strapped KFS.
The Budget and Appropriations Committee of the National Assembly says the moratorium on timber harvesting has hurt performance of several industries besides piling pressure on taxpayers to fund operations of the KFS.
Extra funding
“Apart from its impact on revenue generation for KFS, the ban has hugely affected the performance of [a] number of industries that depend on forest products and forced private forests to sell even non-mature trees to meet increased demand,” the committee said.
“If the moratorium is lifted, the KFS can generate approximately Sh10 billion annually which will reduce its dependency on exchequer revenues and even have extra funding that can be remitted back to the exchequer.”
