This poses significant indirect costs to firms, underlined by an observation about firms in Kenya: "By some estimates, Kenya’s factory floor productivity is close to China’s; but once we account for indirect costs, Kenyan firms lose 40 per cent of their productivity advantage” (larossi, 2009, p. 87).20 Informal firms often most need access to infrastructure and public services to upgrade productivity, but face the highest barriers to access. Firms in Africa lose up to 13 per cent of their working hours due to outages. Electricity costs African firms 10 per cent of sales costs, with 6 per cent estimated to be due to power outages (larossi, 2009).