Where do Safaricom profits go? This is a question many Kenyans are asking. Every year, Safaricom, much like Kenya Airways declares a loss, even though they charge way more for their services than other companies that offer similar services.
For example in the recent exam fiasco, they did not begin to dispense the results of the exams until late in the day, when millions of Kenyans had sent repeated texts. In fact they charged for the repeated texts with no results offered.
One netizen, Jay Kioko noted this and said:
1,400,000 pupils did their KCSE exam this year. Assuming that around one million will check their results via safaricom at 25 shillings, Safaricom will make more than ksh 25,000,000 from pupils only before noon.
Brian Obuya responded thus
According to their published Financial results, they make around 11,350/- per second. That’s about 681,000/- a minute and about 40M every hour or about 980M daily. 25M for today is pocket change to them.
I think everyone working at Safaricom should be driving and having a home. They make too much money every year. The saddest thing is that they expatriate their profits
Now we are wondering… where do Safaricom profits go? Who benefits the most when the country is dependent on a company that immediately sends its profits outside the country?