President William Ruto has directed county governments to waive business permit fees for beneficiaries of the National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (NYOTA) Programme for two years as the government moves to lower the cost of doing business for young entrepreneurs.
The President issued the directive on Friday during the launch of the second tranche of the NYOTA Start-Up Capital Programme at the Ulinzi Sports Complex, Nairobi.
Ruto instructed the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council (IBEC), in collaboration with county governments, to develop and implement the waiver, saying young enterprises should be allowed time to grow before taking on compliance costs.
“Having seen what these young entrepreneurs have achieved with modest support, the Government has a responsibility to remove the barriers that still stand in their way. We must ensure that promising enterprises do not fail because the system makes success unnecessarily difficult,” said Ruto.
He also directed the Ministry of Co-operatives and MSMEs Development to establish a national NYOTA identification mechanism to enable beneficiaries to access government services, incentives and enterprise support programmes.
The directives were issued as the government disbursed more than Ksh3.05 billion to over 122,000 young entrepreneurs across the 47 counties under the NYOTA Programme.
Of these, 88,934 beneficiaries received a second tranche of Ksh25,000 after successfully investing the initial grant, while another 33,269 received their first disbursement.
The launch of the second phase of the NYOTA programme was conducted concurrently in 18 different venues across the country, including Nakuru, Kakamega, Bomet, Eldoret, Garissa, Wajir, Marsabit, Kapenguria, Kitui and Kakamega, Chuka and West Pokot.
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