On Thursday 30, March 2017, Kenya Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich read the budget speech for fiscal year 2017-2018, a departure from the traditional June date when the statement is presented to lawmakers. As the Government opens the coffers for the 2017-18 budgets in three months’ time, the focus of Kenyans will be how Sh2.6 trillion budgets will make their lives better. Henry Rotich yesterday said the budget, themed ‘Creating Jobs, Delivering a Better Life for All Kenyans’, will see the country invest in accelerating job creation especially for the youth.

Comment:

The 2017/2018 budget read to the parliament like the other years has gone up leaving the common citizen to wonder what exactly the causes are that attracts the rise and with big percentages.  From ksh 1.2 trillion in the year 2012/2013 to ksh 2.2 trillion in 2107/2018 which is more than two times within a span of only 5 years. Being an election year the parliamentarians are pushing for Ksh 40.2 billion send off packaged the proposal which is against the National Treasury’s proposal to give legislators Sh36 billion. There is also a scare that Members of County Assembly (MCAs) have pushed for a send-off package. The ever increasing salaries and allowances of politicians have been partly blamed for unsustainable pay demands by other cadres within the public sector. Doctors, nurses, lecturers and teachers have in the current financial year engaged in strikes and go-slows as they called for higher salaries. On the receiving end has been the ordinary Kenyan who has gone without service from the very group that pockets away half of his taxes. This increases the government’s wage bill which stands at more than 75 percent of the total budget.

With food prices a record high, the country’s economy reeling under a Sh3.8 trillion debt, and a number of pre-election promises yet to be fulfilled, Kenyans keenly listened as Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich outlined how the Government intended to spend their taxes in the run-up to the August 8 polls.  Millions of Kenyans  are  struggling to make ends meet, find jobs and support their families and  will now go deeper in their pockets to raise  taxes worth Sh1.77 trillion, more than double what they gave in 2013 (Sh847 billion). This, despite the fact that almost half of these taxes will be used to pay 700,000 Kenyans who form less than two per cent of the country’s population.

The highest of grievances in this budget is the ksh 1.7 trillion that is supposed to be squeezed from the tax payers whose net income has not increase for years that are filled which inflations and loss of incomes due to retrenchments and bankruptcy in companies to only fund areas that can be avoided in the budget like the send off and the pensions. The deficit of the budget will be borrowed as usual which will increase the national budget to ksh 3 trillion that will also have to be paid by the tax payers. These and many problems that we as a nation and entire human race are facing are due to nothing but our own invention of laws that are against the creator who knows and understands this world more than we do.

This reading of the budget is nothing other than political sophistry meant to delude a public that continues to suffer severe afflictions including starvation, disease and a collapsing economy. The budget like any other budget within capitalist governments normally does not solve the burden of high cost of life of common man. The endemic economic crisis affecting the masses will continue since the government faithfully binds itself to a corrupt capitalist economic system. Therefore we should not expect any economic improvement based upon the reading of budgets as long as Kenya is bound itself to the western capitalism.

Bakari Mohamed

Member of the Media office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Kenya