Nairobi County has unveiled a five-year Tariffs and Pricing Policy that for the first time requires every fee, from parking to business permits, to be based on the actual cost of providing each service.
- •The policy document points to Article 209(4) of the Constitution and Section 120 of the County Governments Act, which require counties to adopt a tariffs policy before enacting or enforcing fees.
- •The paper frames the new regime as an attempt to replace decades of legacy by-laws and ad-hoc Finance-Act adjustments with a single methodology for pricing services.
- •By publishing the cost bases and promising annual tariff impact reports, the county intends to create objective benchmarks that auditors, civil society and business groups can use to test whether fees actually reflect service delivery.
The draft presents a consolidated figure for the annual cost of the county’s core services, roughly KSh 46.9 billion, and says tariffs should be derived from mapped fixed and variable costs for each revenue stream, averaged over recent years.
“As demand for public services continues to rise, the County must enhance its capacity to generate sustainable own-source revenue. A well-structured tariffs and pricing policy will enable the County to recover service costs, reduce dependence on national transfers, and fund operations and maintenance of critical infrastructure,” the policy document noted.
The Unified Business Permit
The policy also collapses the county’s patchwork of trader licences into a Unified Business Permit, folding in fire, health and waste-collection levies that businesses currently pay separately. The permit pegs the unit cost of a trade license at KSh 74,743, which is about 15 percent higher than the average charged under the 2023 Finance Act.
According to the document, the value of the construction and maintenance of 16,900 parking slots is KSh 3.54 billion. Spread over 20 years, that translates to an annual capital cost of roughly KSh 177 million. It further estimates that it costs KSh 569 to provide a single parking service in Nairobi, forming the baseline for setting future parking tariffs.
The County government also estimates that it will cost KSh 79,715 to approve a single building plan, a figure drawn from an annual outlay of KSh 4.52 billion spent on the service. The tally folds in salaries, ICT systems, sanitation, inspection vehicles and insurance. Under the new tariff policy, that average cost per applicant will become the baseline for setting future building-approval fees.
Nairobi County will also charge access to its public markets at a base cost of KSh 4,152 per stall in Zone I, covering the city’s core commercial areas, and KSh 2,349 in Zone II, which includes outer neighbourhoods. The tariff, built from a total annual service cost of KSh 377.4 million in the central zone and KSh 323.1 million in the outer zone, reflects expenses for sanitation, lighting, security, firefighting, waste collection and market maintenance.
By linking the charge to geography and the actual cost of service rather than flat rates, the county aims to channel the higher urban levy into upgrading facilities in busier hubs while keeping outer markets affordable.
The cost of providing a rental housing unit at KSh 9,218 per month, based on an annual service bill of KSh 1.84 billion spread across 16,660 county-owned units. Wayleave access will be charged at KSh 113 per metre. The three-year costing exercise, puts the total expense of providing the service at KSh 1.1 billion, spread over an average of 3.24 million metres of permitted wayleaves.
The county estimates the annual cost of operating Pumwani Maternity Hospital at KSh 593.4 million, Mbagathi Hospital at KSh 1.47 billion, Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital at KSh 1.68 billion, Mutuini Hospital at KSh 89 million, and the Nairobi Funeral Home at KSh 93.3 million.
Separately, the policy prices specific public health services at KSh 3,737 per household for food safety, KSh 3,979 for pest management, KSh 7,174 for international health regulation enforcement, and KSh 1,449 each for environmental health and public health programs; rates that reflect the average cost of delivering those services across the city.
For Nairobi residents, the policy offers a pathway to predictability and rule-bound revenue management but it will depend on the county’s willingness to publish the detailed cost models and to let oversight institutions verify the math.
