Kenya Airways to get a financial boost in the supplementary budget.

Kenya airways will be the biggest beneficiary of the  supplementary budget tabled in the National Assembly.

Kenya Airways will receive Sh8 billion directly from the Treasury and Sh2 billion from the Transport ministry to ease the effects of the virus that has reduced the  demand for travel .

The State bailout comes less than a year after Kenya Airways received a Sh5 billion loan from the Treasury to mitigate the effects of the  coronavirus pandemic .

Treasury has also allocated Sh2 billion for the commuter rail project and Sh2.7 billion for construction of the Naivasha Internal Container Depot-Longonot Railway link . 

A report released over the past six months shows the airline’s total revenue reduced by 48% to Kshs 3.1 billion as a result of the cessation of scheduled operations from the second quarter of 2020.

The airline recorded a 55.5% reduction in passenger numbers at 1.1 million passengers compared to 2.4 million passengers over the same period in 2019, with passenger revenue declining by 53% to Kshs 2.1 billion.

Capacity deployed in Available Seat Kilometers (ASKs) also declined by 53.5%. During the period, the airline recorded a loss before tax of Kshs 14.33 billion a 68% drop from the prior year at Kshs 8 billion.

“Following the economic hit ,operations were severely impacted by the Covid-19 crisis resulting in depressed half-year results“, said KQ chairman Michael Joseph.  And this led to a series of bailouts from investors and taxpayers across the year 2020.

In efforts to revamp the airline, this will be acting as a measure to assure immunity for long-term survival in the transport industry.

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