Remember when the government announced the construction of a Ksh.65 billion Expressway, which later amounted to Ksh.72 billion?
Well, what I vividly remember was the mixed reactions from Kenyan citizens arguing that the project was too expensive. And even more, the fact that using the road would be charged, was met with a lot of resistance.
For a moment I thought to myself, is the Jubilee government trying to charge us for accessing infrastructure in our own country? But again, checking how other countries use tolls to generate revenue could not be ignored since it’s a way of building the economy. Anyway, onto our latest news about the latest Expressway report.
Moja Expressway CEO, Steve Zhao reported that the company has registered more than 10 million Expressway users over the last 7 months since the launch of the project.
Read: Nairobi Expressway Opens Gate For M-Pesa Payments
The collection of revenue from this project stands at Ksh.2 billion. How cool is that? I bet the road users didn’t know that their 300-400 shillings would amount to billions over such a short period. In fact, the CEO reported that the company has registered over 10,000 vehicles to the electronic tolling system.
In attendance at this big win ceremony was Joseph Mbugua, the PS for Roads, Transport and Public Works, who expressed confidence that the Expressway will convince investors to venture into more Public-Private Partnerships. He added that the Ministry will consult with PSV operators to come up with modalities on how they can access the Expressway.
I think this is a big step for the Kenyan economy since the country will reduce its debts and venture into other projects.
In fact, let me engage you a bit in reference to this project. Would you invest in public-private partnerships? I don’t know about you, but I would! The odds of success for such projects are ridiculously higher, minus corruption of course!
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