By Eric Aligula and Anne Kamau
In Summary
- Better revenue collection, youth employment and secure country form part of the bouquet the new team must present to expectant Kenyans.
On March 4, 2013 Kenya successfully concluded
elections under the new Constitution, ushering in new leadership in a
devolved form of government.
President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto are faced with the surmountable but difficult task of revamping economic growth and implementing the new supreme law while seeking to deliver on promises made to Kenyans during their campaign.
The new government is faced with a tight resource environment within which to manoeuvre, hence the need to carefully identify priorities that will facilitate the quantum leap of the economy in the next five years, including measures to achieve an appropriate balance between private and public sector investments in the economy.
Kenya’s economic performance in the last five years has been on the upswing from its low 2008 performance, but still faces some challenges. In 2010, 2011 and 2012, the economy grew at 5.8 per cent, 4.4 per cent and 4.5 per cent per annum, respectively.
It is projected to grow at an annual rate of 5.1 per cent, 6.0 per cent and 7.1 per cent in 2013, 2014 and 2015. However, these growth rates remain below the psychological 10 per cent per annum target which is also under the national development blueprint Vision 2030.
As a matter of fact, this administration has promised a double-digit growth rate. Government resources are stretched with a rising wage bill estimated at Sh458 billion, which is about 12 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
While revenue performance at approximately 24.3
per cent of GDP remains strong, the pattern in the growth of taxes has
not aligned with overall government policy aimed at encouraging savings
and investment.
Income taxes continue to contribute upwards of 35
per cent of the total revenue. These income taxes are growing faster
than their respective tax bases. Moreover, Kenya’s population is growing
at 2.7 per cent per annum, accompanied by an ongoing demographic shift.
The proportion of the population that is youthful,
relatively skilled and urbanising and either underemployed or
unemployed is growing quickly. This shift compounds the pressing need
for resources to implement devolved governance structures.
Geopolitically, regional and global situations
show some signs of stability and emerging threats. Kenya may reap from
peace dividend with the renewed efforts to fight the conflict in the
Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. However, the al-Shabaab threat
still remains latent. Globally, the International Monetary Fund has
downgraded global growth projections.
According to the April 2013 World Economic
Outlook, the United States is experiencing low growth with lack of a
credible medium-term fiscal plan to reduce its debt, while the European
Union is facing financial strains arising from the sovereign debt
crisis.
Prosperity promise
For Kenya, these developments have potentially
adverse implications for remittances, demand for exports, as well as
development assistance and foreign investment from these countries.
The Jubilee Manifesto, the electoral platform on
which the new administration was elected, is themed on securing
prosperity for all Kenyans. It aims for a future with the promise of
prosperity and opportunity for all, built around the pillars of unity,
the economy and openness.
It elaborates 23 programmes covering elimination
of ethnic division, keeping Kenya safe and secure, making the country a
strong trading partner in Africa, securing Kenya’s legacy as a sporting
nation and celebrating its culture, building a healthier Kenya,
empowering youth and women, increasing social protections, and building
an enterprise economy
Providing decent housing for all, creating a world-class transport and infrastructure system, improving governance and securing devolution also make the list. President Kenyatta, in his speech to the joint session of Parliament on April 16, 2013, elaborated a nine-point plan.
The plan involves pursuing honest and transparent government, with open and accountable public services, swiftly ending corruption, implementing devolution and the Constitution in full; protecting citizen rights and freedoms, ensuring peace for citizens, creating jobs, streamlining government, and extending basic services of water and electricity.
The resources required to facilitate implementation of the Jubilee Manifesto are huge, but in no way unattainable. In the broad context of these national, regional and international challenges, in order to address them and lay a firm foundation for the delivery of the Jubilee manifesto, the Uhuru administration will need to identify areas of priority.
It needs to take robust steps to not only generate more resources, but to also use them efficiently. It will need to ensure that the power of public procurement not only creates first-round investment jobs, but also provides resources for re-investment in the economy and generates value for money.
Ensuring a more secure and cohesive Kenya will be a critical input in reducing the transaction costs in the economy. These challenges facing Kenya and goals targeted by the administration will require that they should focus on the following six priorities.
1. The creation, recreation and re-engineering of government at both the national and county levels, which is necessary for a lean, rationalised and well-co-ordinated government that can focus on identified national development priorities.
Unity of purpose must be secured between the two levels of government to avoid unnecessary confrontation and tensions, including potential resource waste.
This effort must deal with alignment of mandates to remove overlaps to secure better service delivery, enhancing capacity and capability to make and implement public policy, making it open and accountable, ensuring that public agencies respond and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.
It will require more focused performance management, rationalisation of processes and procedures to remove unnecessary red tape, as well as a review existing and planned policies and programmes.
Other areas are leveraging ICT advantage,
promoting tourism, making Kenya a property-owning democracy through land
reform, securing Kenya’s energy supply, ensuring safe and clean water
for all, enhancing agriculture and food security, and protecting Kenya’s
environment.
Providing decent housing for all, creating a world-class transport and infrastructure system, improving governance and securing devolution also make the list. President Kenyatta, in his speech to the joint session of Parliament on April 16, 2013, elaborated a nine-point plan.
The plan involves pursuing honest and transparent government, with open and accountable public services, swiftly ending corruption, implementing devolution and the Constitution in full; protecting citizen rights and freedoms, ensuring peace for citizens, creating jobs, streamlining government, and extending basic services of water and electricity.
The resources required to facilitate implementation of the Jubilee Manifesto are huge, but in no way unattainable. In the broad context of these national, regional and international challenges, in order to address them and lay a firm foundation for the delivery of the Jubilee manifesto, the Uhuru administration will need to identify areas of priority.
It needs to take robust steps to not only generate more resources, but to also use them efficiently. It will need to ensure that the power of public procurement not only creates first-round investment jobs, but also provides resources for re-investment in the economy and generates value for money.
Ensuring a more secure and cohesive Kenya will be a critical input in reducing the transaction costs in the economy. These challenges facing Kenya and goals targeted by the administration will require that they should focus on the following six priorities.
1. The creation, recreation and re-engineering of government at both the national and county levels, which is necessary for a lean, rationalised and well-co-ordinated government that can focus on identified national development priorities.
Unity of purpose must be secured between the two levels of government to avoid unnecessary confrontation and tensions, including potential resource waste.
This effort must deal with alignment of mandates to remove overlaps to secure better service delivery, enhancing capacity and capability to make and implement public policy, making it open and accountable, ensuring that public agencies respond and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.
It will require more focused performance management, rationalisation of processes and procedures to remove unnecessary red tape, as well as a review existing and planned policies and programmes.
It should be about building a joined-up,
functional, cost-effective and efficient government that will ensure
smooth and speedy implementation of policies necessary for growth and
development.
2. Dealing robustly with
insecurity in all of its manifestations, internal and external, will be
Herculean but doable. Insecurity and disregard of the law must be dealt
with in robust ways by the security and judicial apparatus.
It will require an expansion, on a priority basis,
of the capacity and capability of the law and order organs to ensure
that crime is not only detected, but dealt with conclusively.
Security at Kenya’s borders should be intensified
to filter out criminals entering the country. Achieving security and
safety will be important in the overall effort of reducing the cost of
doing business and creating an enabling environment for domestic and
foreign investors.
The presence of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) in
Somalia is testimony to this commitment. Moreover, the KDF must be
allowed to complete their work and domestically the same resolve must be
displayed by the administration in dealing with existing and emerging
security challenges.
3. Creating meaningful jobs on a large-scale
and across the country is imperative. Active participation of both the
private and public sectors will be required to create the one million
jobs annually on the scale and magnitude required to reduce unemployment
levels.
Pursuing an export-led growth strategy, as
enunciated in the Jubilee Manifesto, will require a robust shift from
the current strategies that have seen minimal expansion of the
manufacturing sector, to more dynamic ones that will rapidly expand
investment in infrastructure, agriculture, tourism, ICTs, education as
well as develop value-adding light manufacturing industries, which are
labour absorbing.
The capacity and capability of the domestic
construction industry must be enhanced. This will not only ensure that
the youth get jobs but will also economically engage women, thus
increasing the chances of eradicating poverty.
These processes will provide the platform for
achieving double-digit growth on a sustainable and inclusive basis as
per the Vision 2030 strategy. Productivity improvement and
competitiveness of the private sector will also be essential to
export-oriented growth.
4. Pursuing food and nutrition
security. It will require targeted investment to secure better advisory
services, expand and improve agro-technologies to increase production,
preservation and better use of food, investment in high-value
traditional and non-traditional foodstuffs as well as increasing access
to and reducing prices of inputs.
Moreover, it is important that the country move
from dependency on rain-fed agriculture to irrigation- and
technology-based agriculture to ensure food and nutrition security
all-year round. Relevant agricultural sector institutions need to be
strengthened.
Food supply chain linkages and value-addition must
be supported by the government. The target is to be self-sufficient in
food production, divert contingency funds used in drought relief to
development projects and significantly lower the cost of living in urban
and rural areas.
5. Rebuilding Kenya’s image
regionally and globally is a key linchpin in ensuring that the world
understands its people and what is happening in Kenya in a manner that
does not constrain the flow of much-needed investments and tourists.
More importantly, Kenya will need to be more
aggressive in securing existing markets, pursuing new ones and creating
more and better trading opportunities. Economic and commercial diplomacy
must strongly come to the fore.
Kenya’s oft-stated desire to pursue an export-led
growth and development strategy will not take off if both the existing
and new markets for its products are not aggressively pursued and used,
trade in services is not expanded and the quality and diversity of
products are not expanded.
The link between State organs responsible for
trade and foreign affairs must be closer than ever before, including
stronger and more effective application of our embassies and high
commissions abroad.
6. Reinvigorating the private
sector in all its variations will be essential to ensuring that existing
and new opportunities are tapped. Engagement with and building the
capacity of the domestic private sector to take part in the
opportunities should be a running theme. This move will include active
measures to secure the position of youth as business leaders and not
just as providers of labour.
Along with the six priority areas, the President
has to unite Kenyans by ensuring a sense of belonging by all in his
government. He must address, in a clear and robust fashion, the schisms
that may have been opened in the national social fabric arising from
the outcome of the general election.
Furthermore, the government has to deliberately
manage expectations of opponents and supporters. This will be important
in affording it the necessary space to execute its development agenda.
The new government will require the full support of all of Kenya’s
development partners.
Implementation of these priorities will allow the
Uhuru administration to leverage resources to build a secure foundation
for the more ambitious programmes for achieving the goals of robust
double-digit growth that will create a million jobs annually.
By ensuring a lean and performance-oriented
administration, President Kenyatta will free up resources gained from
elimination of waste, while ensuring a more coherent, focused and
joined-up government.
The key words in 2013 for the Uhuru administration should be prosperity, accountability, inclusiveness and security.
Mr Aligula is the Programmes Co-ordinator,
Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis: Ms Kamau is
Africa Research Fellow, Africa Growth Initiative, Global Economy and
Development, Brookings
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