William Ruto mulling buying fuel from Russia to tame skyrocketing fuel prices

President William Ruto has said he is open to buying fuel from Russia.

Ruto said that during an interview with an international media house.

Ruto was responding to a question he was asked about his recent move to remove fuel subsidies and how he balances the decisions he makes now and the pledges he made during campaigns among them, bringing the price of fuel down.

“The strategy we have is to ensure that we work out with the market forces on how we can have a governmental government relationship that will get us fuel at probably 20 - 25% cheaper than in the market. Those are the interventions I’m looking at, but I had to remove the subsidies because they were a huge drain on resources. That would be used for the development of the country and yet the prices were not coming down,” Ruto said.

“Number one, and number two, it was generally distorting prices of fuel in the country and creating unnecessary shortages. We now have gotten rid of shortages. We haven’t gotten rid of the high prices, but we’ve done two things. We have saved money that was going down the drain. With cartels in the subsidy program. Number two, we have limited shortages.”

Motorists queuing for fuel at a filling station. PHOTO/SWALA NYETI

The president said he aims at setting up intergovernmental platforms to ensure the prices of fuel come down.

"I am now going to move on to the agenda of making sure that we have government-to-government relationships that will progressively now begin the journey to bring the prices of fuel down," Ruto said.

Upon being asked if he would consider working with such countries as Russia to achieve that goal, the president said Kenya was considering exploring available avenues as a country.

“All options are available to us as a country…all options,” he added.