CORPORATE INTELLIGENCE AFRICA ISSUE 0024

cases involving NCPB and Erad. A Nairobi businessman Brian Yongo alleged that Mr Abdullahi had received Sh50 million to ensure that Enrad was favoured. It was alleged that his law firm, Ahmednassir Abdikadir Company Advocates bought tender documents in a bid to supply maize to NCPB. But Mr Abdullahi distanced himself from the mess, claiming the cereals board’s lawyers failed to take appropriate action to protect the parastatal. “I am not the lawyer on record, I only came in to lead the lawyer in the matter and I offered purely technical assistance to the lawyer on record. If you want to get to the bottom of this issue, you should ask the board why it has not appealed against the award of the decree in the High Court,” said Mr Abdullahi. He added that the loss of the case by NCPB was based on negligence and professional incompetence. “As long as the decree has not been challenged, the NCPB will have to pay the amount,” he added. Although the board through the AG obtained court orders to stop Erad from attaching more of NCPB’s assets, it is not out of the woods yet. Former Agriculture Minister Kipruto Kirwa heaped the blame on the government for NCPB’s woes while dismissing negligence from Agriculture Ministry during his stint as the minister. “The blame lies squarely with the government you cannot give a contract to someone and then cancel it,” he said, recommending the privatisation of the board to save it from collapse. However, on Letters of Credits (LCs) opened by NPBC, Mr Kirwa admitted that it was out of order since the Treasury had sent a letter cautioning against opening the letters. “However, it was not possible for companies to import huge volumes of maize without guarantee of pay. That is why LCs were opened,” he said. He further accused delaying of funds for payment to five companies that won tenders to import maize. Banking costs to rise as government From page 36 mobile money service commissions. Analysts say that the changes were likely to cause consumers to consider changing their banking habits especially corporate clients who had to keep their administrative costs low. Following the development, mobile service provider Safaricom has increased the cost of its mobile money transfer service, M-Pesa by 10 per cen. ‘Tariffs for transactions worth more than 101 shillings will go up by 10 per cent with charges for transaction under 100 shillings remain unchanged,” Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said. The adjustment comes amid statistics from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), which indicate that Kenyans made mobile money transactions worth 18 billion dollars last year, the highest ever in the history of the East African nation. The value of the transactions is introduces 10pc tax on bank transactions more than the country’s budget, which is about 16 billion dollars. The transactions included depositing, sending and receiving cash. Some also saved money in their mobile money accounts in the MShwari product. “Our M-Pesa tariff structure is guided by our understanding that we need to sustain the robustness and availability of this money transfer services across the country,” Mr Collymore said in a statement. The value of the transactions, according to new data from CBK on mobile money payments, was an increase of more than 4.4 billion dollars from the previous year’s transactions that stood at 13.4 billion dollars. In 2010, the value of mobile money transactions was not even half of 2012’s. Kenyans then made transactions worth 8.42 billion dollars. Most of the mobile money transactions made last year were recorded in December, where transactions peaked to 1.72 billion dollars. Customers line up at a Banking hall, transaction chrges are set to go up. THE CORPORATE INTELLIGENCE AFRICA FOR AUTHORITATIVE AND EXTENSIVE BUSINESS INSIGHTS www.corporateintelligenceafrica.net 39

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