How much does the Mount Kenya region contribute to Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?
In 2018 , a heated debate arose about how much Mt Kenya produces in the total budget.
More than 70 Members of Parliament drawn from the Mount Kenya region claimed the region was marginalised in terms of development support.
“We know that Mt Kenya region contributes over 60 per cent of our country’s GDP yet only 20 per cent comes back to its people,” said nominated MP Cecily Mbarire who chaired the caucus.
“Mt Kenya region must claim its rightful share of development in the country within the remaining four years of this current administration.”
Central Kenya MPs say 60 percent of the country’s GDP is from the region. Any link to that research? I want to know what is produced in that 14k KM square that contributes $45 billion annually to Kenya’s $75 billion GDP. May be they valued Mt Kenya?
— Mohamed Wehliye (@WehliyeMohamed) October 30, 2018
However it has now emerged that Nairobi, Nakuru and Kiambu are Kenya’s top-three richest counties while Lamu, Samburu and Isiolo are the poorest, according to a new report ranking the contribution of Kenya’s 47 regions to the national annual economic output, also known as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Nairobi, with a contribution of 21.7 percent to the overall GDP, is by far Kenya’s richest county, according to a new Kenya National Bureau of Statistics listing released Wednesday. The capital city is more than three-and-a-half times larger in economic terms than Nakuru, the second-richest county with a 6.1 percent share of the GDP. Kiambu (5.5 percent), Mombasa (4.7 percent) and Machakos (3.2 percent) complete the list of Kenya’s top five wealthiest counties in GDP terms.
The rest of the top ten counties are Meru (2.9 percent), Kisumu (2.9 percent), Nyandarua (2.6 percent), Kakamega (2.4 percent) and Uasin-Gishu (2.3 percent).
The first ever comprehensive study by KNBS of counties’ wealth provides a measure of how much each region contributed to the national cake as at the end of 2017.“Nairobi seized the lion’s share of Kenya GDP at 21.7 percent,” said KNBS director-general Zachary Mwangi during the report’s release in the capital yesterday.
The report titled Gross County Product (GCP) 2019 was funded by the World Bank. It tracked the monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in each of the 47 counties, with a view to providing a picture of the economic structure and relative size of the economy for each county.