President William Ruto will on Thursday host representatives of tea farmers from 54 Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA)-managed factories at State House, Nairobi, where he will hand over a cheque of more than KSh 2 billion recovered from two collapsed banks.
According to a memo sent to factory directors, the funds were recovered from Chase Bank and Imperial Bank, both of which were placed under liquidation five years ago with farmers’ deposits.
“You are hereby invited to accompany the National Chairman for a meeting with President William Ruto at State House, Nairobi, on Thursday, September 11, 2025, at 1 pm,” reads the notice signed by KTDA Company Secretary Mathews Odero.
About 400 directors and representatives are expected to converge in Nairobi’s CBD before being transported to State House for the lunch-hour meeting.
The payment follows an earlier recovery in 2020, when KTDA received KSh 1.7 billion — KSh 1.4 billion from Chase Bank and KSh 300 million from Imperial Bank. Thursday’s disbursement is part of ongoing efforts by the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation (KDIC) to return funds to affected depositors through the Deposit Protection Fund.
KDIC, a state corporation under the KDIC Act, is mandated to insure deposits, liquidate troubled banks, and protect depositors from losing their savings in the event of a bank failure.
KTDA oversees 54 tea factories across 16 tea-growing counties including Kericho, Bomet, Nandi, Nyamira, Kisii, Kiambu, Murang’a, Nyeri, Meru, Embu, and Tharaka Nithi. The agency works with over 611,000 smallholder farmers, indirectly supporting more than four million livelihoods.
Tea remains one of Kenya’s top foreign exchange earners, although diaspora remittances have recently overtaken it as the leading source of forex.
President Ruto’s meeting also coincides with his administration’s announcement of a KSh 2 billion fertiliser subsidy programme for tea farmers. The government has so far provided over 180,000 metric tonnes of fertiliser at a subsidised price of KSh 2,500 per bag in the last two years to help farmers cut costs and boost productivity.
This is the second time President Ruto is meeting KTDA directors at State House as part of his pledge to secure better markets and improve earnings for tea farmers.
