A clash has emerged between the Senate and the Ministry of Roads and Transport over the control of the fuel levy, which generated roughly KSh 120 billion in 2025, exposing competing visions of how the key infrastructure fund should be managed under the devolved system.
- •The Senate Committee on Roads, Transport and Housing is proposing that counties receive 49% of the fund, arguing that financial resources must follow constitutional functions.
- •On the other hand, the Ministry of Roads and Transport is defending a sharply lower 15% allocation for counties, insisting that distribution should be determined by traffic volumes, road classification, and asset value.
- •The Road Maintenance Levy Fund, financed through a per-litre charge on petrol and diesel, is one of the government’s most reliable annual revenue streams that was meant to maintain and repair Kenya’s road network.
The Senate’s position is anchored on the structure of devolution. It argues that counties already manage roughly 76% of Kenya’s road network by length and therefore require a proportional share of maintenance funding.
“All the functions that were being performed by KeRRA and a larger part of KURA are now functions of county governments, therefore the resources should follow the functions,” the senate committee said in its proposal.
Under the committee’s framework, the national government’s 51% allocation would be split across key agencies, with the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) receiving 38%, Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) 4%, the Kenya Roads Board 2%, Kenya Wildlife Service 1%, and 6% directed to the Department of Roads and related oversight functions.
On the county side, the 49% allocation would be distributed between County Rural Roads at 32%, County Urban Roads at 10%, and local Roads Committees receiving 7%, embedding a parallel structure of implementation across subnational road networks while preserving distinct funding channels for rural and urban infrastructure delivery.
The committee has also signaled its intention to amend the Roads Act to allow direct disbursement of the levy to counties, bypassing the Kenya Roads Board (KRB), which currently channels allocations to national agencies.
What the Central Government Prefers
Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary, Davis Chirchir, has rejected that approach by arguing that the levy maintains roads based on usage and not network length. He noted that national trunk roads carry the bulk of freight and passenger traffic and require higher maintenance intensity.
The fuel levy has increasingly been transformed from a pay-as-you-go maintenance fund into a pre-financed revenue stream through securitisation, a mechanism used to convert future fuel consumption into immediate cash for road spending. In practice, the government has pledged about KSh 12 per litre of future levy collections to investors, allowing the Kenya Roads Board to raise upfront financing used to clear contractor arrears, restart stalled projects, and bridge funding gaps in road construction.
While this has eased payment backlogs across road agencies, it has also meant that a growing share of future levy revenue is already contractually committed before reaching the Treasury, tightening fiscal flexibility of the levy.
The ministry has also proposed a detailed classification system dividing roads into national and county categories based on function and administrative responsibility. The proposed system will classify National trunk roads under S, A, B and C and county roads under Classes D, E, F and G. The Senate committee dismissed that framework as overly complex and misaligned with practical governance needs, arguing instead for a simplified structure based on usage rather than technical categorization.
The dispute is unfolding against a backdrop of rising reliance on the fuel levy as a central pillar of Kenya’s infrastructure financing system including the settlement of arrears owed to road contractors across agencies such as the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA).
A High Court ruling in 2025 held that counties must be recognized as beneficiaries of the Road Maintenance Levy Fund, a decision later suspended by the Court of Appeal pending legislative alignment. That ruling has added legal pressure to ongoing parliamentary negotiations over the Roads Act (Amendment) Bill, 2025.
The outcome of the bill will determine not only the distribution of a multi-billion annual revenue stream, but also the balance of authority between Parliament and the executive in managing one of Kenya’s most important earmarked funds.
