Road repair costs up by Sh2.1m per km on costly materials
Workers repair a road in Nairobi County on February 26, 2023.
The cost of periodic maintenance of key roads by the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) is projected to rise by a substantial Sh2.1 million per kilometre in the current financial year, partly on more expensive raw material.
Data by the Kenya Roads Board (KRB) shows that the cost is projected to jump from Sh3.94 million to Sh6.06 million in the current 2023/24 financial year—a change of about 53 per cent.
The board says higher period maintenance costs for the current fiscal year are “attributable to the uptake of roads with failed payments and increase in price construction materials mainly due to rise in fuel prices.”
The increase in costs is expected to hit periodic maintenance, which is described as maintenance carried out at specific intervals to preserve the pavement structure of a road.
Road agencies are also tasked with routine maintenance, which involves regular planned maintenance including filling potholes and spot involvement which captures the restoration of a failed section of a road.
KeNHA is expected to spend an estimated Sh1 billion on the periodic maintenance of 166 kilometres of paved road surfaces.
Routine maintenance and spot improvement will, meanwhile, cost three times as much or Sh3.1 billion and will involve 717.3 kilometres of road.
The bulk of KeNHA’s road maintenance budget at Sh14.4 billion will be handled under performance-based contracting where most risks in the road maintenance contracts are transferred to the contractor.
KRB has made Sh33.6 billion available to KeNHA in the current financial year for road works.
On its part, the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (Kerra) has been allocated Sh25.6 billion for road works including Sh18.7 billion for routine maintenance and spot improvement.
The road maintenance budget by Kerra is slightly higher than the Sh17.9 billion set aside for the same works last year.
“Kerra’s financial year 2023/24 work plan is targeted towards spot improvement to improve accessibility to rural roads and routine maintenance for asset preservation,” said KRB.
Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura) will work with a budget of Sh12 billion from, which it will deploy Sh8.7 billion for road maintenance intervention measures on some planned 2,821 kilometres of road.
