What do you anticipate will be the cost of doing business in the counties if the laws passed by county governments are to be strictly followed? How are the sand vendors affected and how will this affect the construction industry given that a lot of sand comes from machakos county?

Last week our local newspaper had an article of the laws passed in Machakos county. From a layman's perspective, they do not look punitive but when you plan to do business, you realise Kshs 100 is not a small note and it becomes quite expensive.

eg, there is a charge at Kshs100 per tonne for waste dumping. This would mean, the cost of excavating an 1/8 plot of land goes up by Kshs80,000 (Kshs100 * 20 tonnes (per tipper) * 40 tippers on average per plot) up and above the usual costs which would be just for dumping. If you put in the other charges levied on say lorry owners, licenses since all these will be pushed to the client, it wont be cheap to invest in these new opportunities.