For millions of households and businesses, Kenya’s economic environment has been – to say the least – quite challenging.
The combination of electoral disruption and a prolonged drought significantly disrupted economic activity, slowing down growth to 4.9 percent in 2017 from a revised 5.9 percent the previous year.
Improved weather and a tranquil political environment however brought some relief in 2018, offering hope of a rebound expected to close at 5.8 percent.
And so as we start 2019, expectations are that things will improve further and Kenyans are headed for less economic pain. Consolidating the growth momentum will be critical and the government must address all the bottlenecks that have brought turbulence in the past couple of years.
It must tackle head-on the challenge of job creation where there has been little movement despite overall improvement in the economic environment.
Stakeholders must work towards establishing an enabling environment for industry to thrive and absorb a bigger workforce that can guarantee shared economic progression across all levels.
That journey must start with addressing the private sector concerns over a raft of issues including high cost of energy, access to credit and high taxation.
Corruption remains a key hindrance to small business in whatever segment of the economy.
Taming the incessant wastage of public resources through corruption must also be a priority this year.
This is because huge portions of the country’s annual budget have gone unaccounted for over the years yet key programmes such as infrastructure, healthcare and housing remained underfunded.
The spotlight should stay on accounting officers in all public agencies to ensure every coin of taxpayers’ money is utilised prudently and accounted for.
The National Treasury must enforce tighter controls it recently imposed on ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), requiring mandatory prior approval of planned public projects and programmes.
This way, fiscal consolidation would be achievable and thus help lower the overall budgetary deficit and limit debt accumulation.
The Treasury has set an ambitious target of reducing the overall expenditure and net lending from 26.3 per cent in fiscal year 2018/19 to an average of 23.2 percent in the medium term.
This will only be achieved through proactive monitoring of budgets.
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