Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has announced that its Customs and Border Control department has collected as record Ksh. 82.554 billion in January 2025. This is a milestone in the history of Customs.

KRA Customs kicked off the second half of the 2024/2025 financial year on an upward trajectory, after surpassing its January target of Ksh 74.439 billion by collecting a surplus of Ksh. 8.116 billion, reflecting a performance rate of 110.9%.

This performance represents a 27.0% growth compared to the 4.8% growth recorded in the first half of the financial year 2024/2025 (July- December 2024) period.

This revenue performance is attributed to reforms within Customs, including the establishment of the Centralised Release Operations. Under this new process, release officers are stationed at a centralized location and allocated customs declarations randomly for release. This approach has significantly resulted to a more objective release process of managing risks and improving revenue mobilisation efforts.

Another key factor that contributed to the strong revenue performance was the growth in non-petroleum taxes of 11.6%, compared to January 2024. Petroleum taxes also had a strong performance registering a growth 55.9% against the same period last year. This growth in Petroleum taxes was largely driven by a 6.6% increase overall oil volumes, with a significant growth in petrol (89.7%) and diesel (65.0%) resulting in above-target performance across various tax heads, including VAT oil, excise duty oils, and fuel levies (PDL, RML, PRL, and RDL).