UDF: We will create 2m jobs in first year

By STANDARD REPORTER

United Democratic Forum (UDF) party says it will create two million jobs in the first year in office if elected next year.

Assistant Minister for Industrialisation Nderitu Muriithi told over 350 professionals from North Rift at the Eldoret Members club that Kenya spends Sh50 billion annually to import vegetable oils that could easily be made locally.

“Every year, Kenya uses Sh50 billion to import 600,000 metric tonnes of vegetable oil, mainly palm oil, which are used to produce edible oil like cooking fat, as well as soaps.

 It is this importation that we propose to produce locally to create jobs at home and a market for our farmers” he said on Friday evening.

To produce 600,000 metric tonnes of vegetable oil will take about three million acres of oil crops among them sunflower, jojoba, sim sim, corn, groundnuts, palm and cotton.

“Most of these do well in areas previously regarded as marginalised. Sim sim and groundnuts do well in the Coast, while sunflower thrives throughout Central Rift, and Nyandarua,” he said.

He added, “Production will engage over 1.5 million Kenyans in direct crop production, and another 500,000 in the processing and transportation. Processing involves vegetable oil extraction and we will have hundreds of small expellers – small and medium sized enterprises – thus creating jobs and wealth for Kenyans.”

Currently, he added, Kenya was at loggerheads with our East African Community (EAC) partner Tanzania, which has invested heavily in promoting oil crops production locally.

Tanzania is lobbying Kenya to hike palm oil imports duty to 25 per cent. “The UDF policy to promote local oil crop production is in line with our regional commitments to EAC partners like Tanzania besides local benefits in job creation and saving ourselves colossal amounts of foreign exchange hemorrhage that is fueling inflation.

In addition, sunflower is an easy crop to grow in two seasons in a year. It is a small holder crop with enormous potential to increase the incomes of thousands of small scale farmers,” Muriithi said.