President William Ruto has announced that logging licenses will no longer be issued in an opaque manner.
Speaking on Monday during the passing out parade of Kenya Forest Service (KFS) inspector cadets and forester trainees at the National Youth Service headquarters in Gilgil, Nakuru County, the President has directed that this should from now on be done through open and public tendering.
Ruto mentioned that the move will see Kenyans getting value for their forest resources, while transparency will develop the capacity of local industry to exploit them and boost job creation.
“To make sure that we exploit our forest resources in a transparent and effective manner, the old method of allocating forest resources in a manner that is not transparent has to stop,” he said.
“Going forward, all public resources in the forests will be tendered for in a transparent manner.”
Further, President Ruto pointed out, that KFS now largely runs its operations from internally generated revenue, an example that should be emulated by other government institutions.
“This year, we only supported KFS to the tune of KSh280 million. The rest of the KSh4.7 billion budget was raised by KFS itself. I have the undertaking of the minister and KFS that next year it will no longer require resources from the Exchequer. You are an example to other agencies that it is possible to run on internally generated resources,” the President said.
Further Ruto announced that the government will give preference to locally manufactured timber products over imported ones.
“We have already taken steps as Government to make sure that the use of locally available forest resources takes precedence over imported timber products,” he said.
Moreover, he said the Government will amend the Forest Conservation and Management Act (2016) so that stakeholders in conservation and climate action have effective support to pursue innovation and collaboration to turn forests and forest protection into vehicles of sustainable transformation.
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