Kenya's private sector pushes for harmonised govt policies

What you need to know:

Move to make it easier to recommend incentives different sectors need when a government strategy affects a particular sector negatively.
Kepsa chairman: "One of the things we are going to be pushing for as Kepsa is to have a unit that co-ordinates the whole of the economic performance of Kenya not just different sectors"

Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) is pushing for an independent unit to assess the impact of policy decisions, making it easier to mitigate against any adverse impact.

Patrick Obath, Kepsa’s chairman said on Tuesday that there has been no co-ordination on the impact policies in one segment affect the other sectors.

“A lot of the areas in government operate on a silo basis…but when you look at the current account of Kenya, it is affected by more than 15 different inputs and outputs and we do not have a unit which co-ordinates the inputs of these sectors and their impact on the economy,” he said, during the release of the results of a business confidence survey done in conjunction with polling firm Ipsos Synovate.

He said the impact of certain government agency policies such as decisions adopted by the Monetary Policy Committee needed to be measured and recommendations made on how they affect other sectors of the economy and what kind of stimulus will be needed.

“One of the things we are going to be pushing for as Kepsa is to have a unit that co-ordinates the whole of the economic performance of Kenya not just different sectors…put it all into one basket, once we are able to do that we will be able to be a lot more confident that the government is in charge of the economic performance,” said Mr Obath.

Maggie Ireri, Ipsos Synovate's managing director, said that according to the survey, the high cost of energy and credit and increasing insecurity have emerged as the biggest challenges companies in Kenya are facing.

Out of 145 companies surveyed in Kenya, 63 per cent said that they are being affected negatively by the high cost of energy and 61 per cent said that they are facing difficulty in accessing credit due to high cost.

Insecurity has become a major challenge to 59 per cent of firms in the country followed by unfavourable tax policies and political instability according to 54 and 50 per cent of companies operating in Kenya.

According to the survey, 77 per cent of the companies sampled said that they will be investing in technology over the next six to 12 months; 70 per cent said that they plan to introduce new products into the market and 57 per cent said that they intend to hire more staff.