Diesel Hits Record Ksh242.92 as Fuel Prices Spike

Kenyan motorists had been bracing for this one, but the scale still landed hard.

EPRA's mid-May pricing review pushed diesel to an all-time high of Ksh242.92 per litre in Nairobi, up Ksh46.29 in a single cycle, while petrol rose to Ksh214.25.

For the first time in the country's pricing history, diesel cost nearly Ksh29 more than petrol, a gap with real consequences for a country where trucking, agriculture, and matatus run almost entirely on diesel.

The driver was a 20.32% jump in the landed cost of imported diesel between March and April, compounded by lingering fallout from the MT Paloma import scandal earlier in the year, which had already claimed the jobs of three senior EPRA officials, including the regulator's own Director General.

Kerosene was held flat only because the government absorbed the increase directly.

The knock-on effects arrived almost immediately. Transport federations floated fare increases of 15–20%, food prices were expected to follow as trucking costs rose, and electricity bills faced pressure too, since diesel-fired thermal plants feed directly into the Fuel Energy Cost Charge on every KPLC bill.

It was, by most measures, the sharpest single-month cost shock Kenyan consumers had felt in years.