The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) will from next month start regulating the price of cooking oil in Kenya.
Following 12 months of rise in price of cooking oil, EPRA wants to regulate the price of the same to ensure that Kenyans are not over exploited by the cartels, considering that 2022 is an election year. By introducing ceiling prices, EPRA will being order to the cooking oil sector, just as the authority has done to the crude oil products.
EPRA Director General Daniel Kiptoo said that the authority was not interested in regulating the cooking oil prices, but recent developments had left them with little or no choice.
“We have seen the rich fight for cooking oil at Carrefour. Fully grown men and women of middle-class status scrambling to get cheap cooking oil. This is a blow to our national sovereignty. The poor are also following a similar script but in a different way. They are boiling mandazis in water because they cannot afford cooking oil. Some chips mwitu vendors operating under footbridges are selling boiled potatoes disguised as chips. This has to stop.”
EPRA is expected to announce the pricing formula to be used to arrive at the recommended retail price for cooking oil before the new pricing takes effect next month. This will be similar to the one used for petroleum prices.
Alternative Cooking Oil
The Authority also advised Kenyans to consider eating pork because ‘it can fry itself with its own oil.’ “Our intervention strategy will involve using affordable solutions that people have always taken for granted. When you buy meat, do not complain when part of is just fat. Better, you can buy pork which comes with a lot of fat and make lard for later use. This is commonsense.”
While some people questioned the rationality of an energy regulator dictating the price of cooking oil, EPRA said that it is all within its mandate. “Regulating how people cook is part of our energy agenda. Besides, the high cost of cooking oil has led to an increase in transformer vandalism. Unless we address this, we will continue to suffer power outages as more transformers are vandalized.”
