By Angwanda Jakorandoh

THE Ministry of Water and Irrigation will spend Ksh. 180 Billion to construct 60 dams within the country’s irrigation schemes to foster irrigation agriculture.

Permanent Secretary, David Stower said the dams each with a storage capacity of 3 billion cubic liters of water will be constructed across the country in areas where farmers rely on irrigation for commercial crop production.

Stower said proposals have already been made to the Africa Development Bank (ADB) in its next funding to Kenya and the two are at the moment studying the project.

Speaking at the Ahero rice Irrigation scheme, Stower said the water storage dams when built will greatly reduce the cost of rice production in the country and make Kenya ’s rice competitive in the international market.

He said currently the cost of producing rice in Kenya consumes 50% of the entire budget making it too costly to be sold to Kenyans let alone the international market.

He attributed this to electrical pumping of irrigation water especially in Ahero and said once a gravity pump is put up, the cost is expected to go down considerably.

The PS said the National Irrigation Board had embarked on a mission to make agricultural production possible with irrigation.

He said the board has a strategy to deliver 40,000 hacters of land for irrigation each year and cited the revival of the Ahero, West Kano and Bunyala irrigations schemes as just the beginning of better things to come.

Rice investment group (RECA) chairman Peter Odhengo lauded the move the by the Ministry to make cheap the cost of rice production and said it would greatly improve the lives of rice farmers in Kenya .