Nyeri to give three-year tax holiday for investors on Kenol-Marua dual carriageway
Nyeri County Assembly members during the opening of the session by Governor Mutahi Kahiga on October 5, 2022.
The Nyeri County government will give a three-year tax holiday to industrial investors after the Kenol-Marua dual carriageway is completed.
Officials want to tap local and foreign investors in the agriculturally rich county, said Governor Mutahi Kahiga.
He said his administration wants to exploit the newly rehabilitated Nairobi-Nanyuki metre-gauge railway line and the new highway.
The offer is to "companies starting and scaling up their businesses in Nyeri County", Mr Kahiga said in his inaugural address of the third assembly on Wednesday.
"The policy is intended to attract more than 100 companies regionally and internationally and create more than 2,000 jobs," he added.
He said he wants to make the county a tourism and culture destination globally.
The county will map “tourism niche products, both fauna and flora, and identify tourism sites and develop a web-based electronic catalogue to market our products”, he said.
He said the platform will target eco-tourism, agro-tourism, adventure-tourism and cultural heritage by developing talent across the sub-counties on photography and videography, film creation, and performing arts and promote sports tourism.
Nyeri also plans to issue title deeds to residents and institutions in colonial villages by 2027 so as to increase access to capital.
"This includes individual holdings, churches, schools, other public institutions, and digitisation of land records," Mr Kahiga said.
Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga being received at the County Assembly on October 5, 2022.
"This will give people the freedom to organise their lives with a sense of permanence and they will be free to use their property to access credit and grow their businesses."
The county government also plans to rehabilitate dams and water pans so as to increase water supply in parts of the drought-hit region.
"I have committed to rehabilitate 30 dams and 100 water pans to increase water supply for irrigation [and] power generation, and increase acreage under irrigation to 20,000ha from the current 5,000ha,” he said.
“This will benefit over 80,000 families through irrigation to increase food production to feed the people in the county."
The county government has disbursed Sh64.5 million to Wakulima Dairy, Kieni Dairy Product Ltd, Sabeke, Nyeri South Banana, Mukeni Poultry, and Mwikuria Grains cooperative societies.
Mr Kahiga said the capital investment has improved the value chains of the cooperatives.
But the county requires an additional investment of Sh24 million to complete ongoing projects.
Some 18 of 30 elected MCAs are carryovers from the previous assembly, a remarkable feat compared with other counties, where voters threw out most of their ward representatives.
In the 2017 elections, only two of 30 MCAs were re-elected.
