THE World Bank has released Sh500 million to help boost Kenya’s telecommunications sector.
The Breton Woods financial institution’s capital injection is set to benefit both Kenya’s Call Centre sector and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) amongst others.
Kenya ICT board chief executive officer, Paul Kukubo, recently announced that part of the Sh500 million came from the Sh8 billion made available under the Transparency and Communications Infrastructure Project (TCIP) aimed at boosting the capacity support for the BPO economic sector.
“The support is meant to reinforce the industry and thus will be given only to companies that have been operational for a minimum of three months.
“This will go a long way in advancing the performance of BPO operators through reduced operational costs,” said Kukubo.
He said the government of Kenya would pay part of the remaining amount to complement the additional costs of the bandwidth that the operators would have incurred during the process of making this latest technology successful.
Kukubo said the ICT board would audit all the companies and oversee the transparency in the disbursement of the funds.
More than 300 operators are expected to benefit from the World Bank funding while the rest of the East African Region (EAR) is expected to receive similar support in the near future.
BRIAN ADERO in Nairobi, Kenya
ITNewsAfrica.com
