Did Jubilee miss opportunity to show it’s a ‘digital’ government?
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission officials register voters in Nakuru in the mass exercise conducted in March this year. PHOTO | FILE
The Missed Digital Opportunity (Part 1)
More than a year to the event, Kenya’s pre-election mood continues to dominate public, if not private discourse across the country.
On the one hand, our public Independent Eleectoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) brouhaha is now an elite “IEBC-specific” negotiation that reportedly will not look at national ID cards.
The bipartisan political committee that will select the independent panel who will recruit the new IEBC team is being formed. Within 30 days, legislative and administrative changes around IEBC will be brought to Parliament.
On the other, Parliament’s National Assembly is upset. With next year in mind, MPs this week opened formal discussion on the 2016/17 budget with the rallying cry – “No CDF, No Budget”. The Appropriation Bill is legally due to be passed by June 30. In a normal country, this deadline would be met as a matter of course.
Instead, we haven’t begun debate around revenue, expenditure and debt.
This is the politics we buy when we vote. Today it is IEBC and the budget. Tomorrow, it is something else. In all of this, we forget that government has no money of its own. It works through the taxes we pay today in return for value, and those we will pay tomorrow, which today we call “sustainable debt”.
Rather than fall into deep depression, let’s look at IEBC and the budget through a pro-people perspective. First, it is worrying that the “IEBC-specific” negotiation is not looking at ID cards. Lest we forget, in 2013 we had an eligible voter population of 21.8 million out of 42 million Kenyans. IEBC only targeted 18
million and registered 14.4 million voters. And 12.3 million people voted. At presidential level, the 50.07 per cent winning percentage effectively translated into 28.25 per cent of the eligible vote.
Yet Ministry of Interior records claimed 20 million ID cards were in existence, despite political party concerns on the availability of IDs for, especially, young Kenyans.
Fast forward to 2017. Estimating the eligible voter population at 24 million out of a 47 million national populace, IEBC this time targets 22 million voters, including eight million new voters, but two million below those eligible.
In its first round of voter registration, only 1.4 million people entered the voter’s roll. Meanwhile official statistics show that only 70 to 80 per cent of ID applications are actually processed.
As I have said before, a credible election begins not simply with voter registration, but with voter identification. It is tempting to suspect reluctance on the part of the incumbent Jubilee to open up this part of the process.
Do we need to introduce compulsory voting, even if this just creates a backward linkage to the national ID that many young people struggle to acquire?
Second, let’s look at the budget, through a revenue lens. Much comment has already been made about the revenue-raising proposals in the Budget Statement and Finance Bill. Two proposals stand out for their sheer audacity. One, the proposal to access Safaricom M-Pesa transactions. Two, the idea to introduce a presumptive tax for the informal sector.
Yes, Treasury secretary Henry Rotich is terribly keen to raise revenues, but where did these proposals come from?
Look no further than Kenya Revenue Authority’s 2015/16-2017/18 Strategic Plan. By 2017/18, KRA is looking at four million taxpayers contributing a “no-deficits” Sh2 trillion revenue target to the Exchequer.
Where is it looking at to double its taxpayer base (and hence, revenues)?
Observing that only a quarter of Kenya’s eight million registered PIN holders are active taxpayers today, its medium targets include our 38 million mobile phone connections, and 27 million mobile money subscribers who transacted Sh2.8 trillion in 2015.
KRA sees potential in an “untaxed” base of 2.7 small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), one million commercial small-scale farmers (tea, coffee and sugar), 100,000 landlords, 700,000 boda boda riders (motorcycle “taxi” owners) and 35 million bank customer deposit and loan accounts.
Capital gains tax, real estate revenue enhancement, property taxes and growth in VAT collections are part of this Sh2 trillion agenda. Added to better debt collection and reduced tax expenditure (exemptions and incentives), KRA expects brand new annual revenue in the order of Sh300 billion.
What’s missing from this picture? These are all speculative estimates aimed at “easy” targets.
Let’s think about it. Official Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) data tell us we have 15.1 million people in employment, of whom 12.5 million operate in the informal sector, yet determine that only around four million (farmers, boda bodas and SMEs) will be taxed.
Further, how is it we have two million taxpayers (including companies) and five million individual NHIF and NSSF members?
Kenya today has roughly 300,000 registered business, with 30,000 new businesses being registered each year, yet we are targeting 2.7 million SMEs.
There are roughly 2.5 million motor vehicles in Kenya today – including 100,000 minibuses – and increasing at an annual rate of 250,000.
One million of the total are motorcycles, increasing annually at 140,000. Yet National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) issues only 30,000 PSV licences every year.
There’s a common missing thread in this IEBC and budget (revenue-raising) discussion. We are facing a real challenge with “identification”, whether it is to do with voters or taxpayers.
Many countries are working towards developing proper identity infrastructure as the backbone to service provision by government, whether this is to do with tax or social services, voting at elections or other day-to-day government services (for example at Huduma Centres).
In the Budget Statement, as well as the President’s March State of the Nation Address, mention was made of the Integrated Population Registration System (IPRS) – launched in 2015 - as the panacea.
Yet, we still have a whole range of separate identification and registration documents underpinned by distinct and disconnected systems each procured through deliberately detached tender processes.
Then we let IEBC and KRA rely on guesswork in selecting their target populations. Is there a better answer that begins by citizen identification as the legitimate basis for state-citizen relations?
Can we rely on a credible IEBC voter register, or KRA revenue realism without an understanding of those who are in Kenya? Did the Jubilee Administration miss out on one of its greatest opportunities to demonstrate to Kenyans its credentials as a “digital government”?
In the face of this mini-avalanche of data, let’s ponder the answers to these questions next week.
