Plans by the Ministry of Investments, Trade, and Industry (MITA) to have Rivatex East Africa Ltd (REAL) transferred from Eldoret to Naivasha has been expunged by Parliament, citing possible economic harm to the larger region currently being served by the firm.
The ministry was banking on tapping the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to finance the transfer. If not for the early setback, MITA was preparing to have a cabinet memo to initiate the relocation of the firm.
Leaving the plan to materialise signaled additional budget that the government would have incurred in supporting the process through the upcoming 2023/24 budget unless it got investors’ support.
The ministry, under Moses Kuria, did not give any justification for this transfer plan in its policy presentation to the Jame Gakuya-led departmental trade committee scrutinising the revised supplementary budget for that ministry.
The committee has instead suggested to the ministry to construct a subsidiary of Rivatex in Naivasha to utilise the cotton being grown in the central region. A transfer of Rivatex would have hurt cotton growers in the larger Rift Valley and some parts of the Western and Nyanza regions.
Other than relocating Rivatex, the ministry is also targeting to have Rivatex specialise in fabric manufacturing, activate all 24 counties to cotton growing and roll out various training programs as some of the key priorities under the textile desk.
