KTDA to announce bonus payout as administrators evaluate 2024 financials

KENYA – The Kenya Tea Growth Company (KTDA) is ready to announce the bonus payout charges for tea farmers as manufacturing unit administrators meet to evaluate and approve the audited monetary accounts for the 12 months ending June 2024.

These conferences, scheduled between September 9 and 17, will assess the efficiency of varied factories, with the formal declaration of bonus payouts anticipated to observe shortly after.

Tea farmers in Kenya obtain two annual funds: a mini-bonus, which is the preliminary payout, and the second, bigger cost, generally known as the bonus.

This 12 months’s bonus is extremely anticipated, with Kenya’s President William Ruto just lately suggesting that farmers might earn a document KES70 (US$0.54) per kilogram attributable to authorities interventions geared toward boosting farmer incomes.

In 2023, the KTDA paid KES180 billion (US$1.4B) in bonuses, following a KES114 billion (US$885M) payout in 2022.

The bonus charges paid by factories are decided by a number of components, together with the earnings for the 12 months, the standard of tea leaves delivered, manufacturing prices, and the typical worth the manufacturing unit secured available in the market.

The present price for inexperienced leaves is KES21.5 (US$0.17) per kilo, a rise from KES20 (US$0.16) per kilo final 12 months.

The tea trade, an important element of Kenya’s financial system, achieved document export earnings in 2023, amounting to KES180.57 billion (US$1.4B), a major rise from KES138.09 billion (US$1B) in 2022.

In response to the Kenya Tea Business efficiency highlights for 2023, a further KES16.4 billion (US$127.3M) was generated from home tea gross sales, bringing the full marketed worth to KES196.97 billion (US$1.5B).

Regardless of elevated export volumes, the Africa Commerce Brokers Restricted (AFBL) revealed that the typical worth of Kenyan tea on the Mombasa public sale declined by 2.6 % within the first eight months of 2024, from US$2.26 per kilogram in 2023 to US$2.2 in 2024.

To enhance Kenya’s tea competitiveness within the international market and improve farmer incomes, the federal government has launched a number of initiatives.

In June, President Ruto allotted KES1 billion (US$7.76M) for the development of two value-addition and branding facilities.

Moreover, he launched the Chai Gold model, positioning it as KTDA’s flagship product, a transfer geared toward strengthening tea branding efforts.

President Ruto has additionally urged the KTDA to modernize its services, automate processes, and help smaller factories in including worth and branding their teas.

These efforts are meant to place Kenyan tea as a premium international product and additional improve the competitiveness of the trade.