Irrespective of how independent the judiciary would like to portray itself to be , no dalliance with a manipulative and smooth political operator is likely to endear them to the general public and perhaps their image is irreparably damaged .
though the IMF and the World Bank have taken control of the Kenyan economy and the prescribed textbook economic solutions that they have offered are making Kenya an experimental basket case .
There is a common-sense adage that says that if you find yourself in a hole you immediately stop digging . What is galling is that this administration has continued to dig with an excavator while shouting from the top of the mountain that they are in a really deep hole .
The dynamic duo is travel struck and have become globetrotters ostensibly to strike international deals for Kenya or to find employment for the vast horde of unemployed Kenyan youth .
One such deal was the incomprehensible government to government oil deal that was supposed to ensure a sufficient supply of petroleum products and apparently address the dollar shortage , depleted , you guessed it , by the last administration .
The only snag is that this ingenious deal resulted in the surge of local fuel prices at exactly the time when the global oil prices were falling . The energy ministry even had the temerity to inform Kenyans to brace for even more higher prices .
This daylight robbery without violence of the citizenry by their elected government is as brazen as it will ever be . The level of insensitivity and impunity is astonishing given the crucial role fuel plays in driving the economy .
If this deal is good for Kenya how come it is not good for our neighbors who have opted out of now importing oil through Kenya claiming that the pricing is extortionate and opaque , who is fooling who ?
For a whole president to visit the middle east supposedly to secure jobs for Kenyans as house maids and servants is demeaning and actually an insult to Kenyans . Slavery by any name is still slavery .
That was not the hustler deal , the deal was to create an enabling environment in the country to attract investment in industrial production and thus make use of our qualified and educated working class , not to export cheap labor .
The much-bandied hustler fund turned out to be just another hoax and is laughable to imagine that someone in his right mind would imagine that giving someone a loan of five hundred bob for ten days is supposed to set him or her up on a fruitful business
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Irrespective of how independent the judiciary would like to portray itself to be , no dalliance with a manipulative and smooth political operator is likely to endear them to the general public and perhaps their image is irreparably damaged .
sojourn .
After disparaging the former president for the huge debt burden , he saddled Kenyans with , it appears the president ’ s appetite for loans is at least triple that of the former president . Such duplicity is not only unbecoming but dishonest .
Loans , per se , are not the problem , so long as they are taken to finance development projects whose pay back period may be way in the future but not so if loans are borrowed on behalf of Kenyans and end up in private accounts . It is however in the area of taxation that the government has gone really crazy as it has a 3.7 trillion shillings budget projecting a tax revenue of 3.0 trillion shillings , to contrast Kenya collected 2.1 trillion in the last fiscal year .
The additional 1 trillion shillings the administration is seeking is what has caused the raft of new taxations on nearly everything that has caused someone to quip that the administration ’ s main job is to find new ways to remove a shilling from the pocket .
We are not aware of any country that has been taxed to prosperity , in fact the opposite is always true that when you reduce taxes thereby increasing spending power you stimulate the economy .
The economy is doing badly and there is capital flight as investors are decamping for more investor friendly environments and the slide of the shilling is just one of the indicators thar investors are fleeing the country . All is not well with the economy .
The number of companies in the Kenyan bourse that have posted a profit warning is alarming and frankly frightening for the tottering Kenyan economy . Practically every new fiscal measure undertaken is a nail in the economy ’ s coffin .
Kenya is already a highly taxed country without commensurate benefits for the tax paid . Kenya seems to be very keen on tax collection but not on the tax usage hence the almost criminal level of wastage and indiscipline in public funds management .
We have insisted on maintaining an unsustainable big government and its devolved appendage , paying astronomical salaries for idle public workforce who then spend their time bickering to remain relevant .
Using basic economics , we can confidently predict that the revenue authority will not hit its current target not because of lack of effort but because the economy cannot sustain their push and quoting the now popular saying ‘ punda amechoka ’.
According to the budget , we are supposed to borrow 700 billion shillings but we have already borrowed over a trillion shillings , what is the money being borrowed for and where is it as we are not aware of any large projects that are underway .
Shouldn ’ t there be a mechanism to set the country ’ s debt ceiling through parliament and since when did the president become a public accountant so that he can unilaterally commit the country fully cognizant of the economic benefit or disadvantage of his actions .
Why is the citizen tightening his belt and getting his pocket raided to fund a luxurious lifestyle for his employees . Any reasonable challenge to what is happening is speedily thwarted at the courts that are , as indicated , already bought . Welcome to state capture .
When your own economic adviser publicly declares that he will not be party to your lies that take the public for fools and further states that he will not condone corruption and the vomiting on people ’ s shoes , then you know you have created a dystopia .
The cover piece was pieced together by the Marketing Africa editorial crew . For feedback or any more discourse please drop us a line at : Info @ marketingafrica . co . ke .