EDITORIAL: Ease cost of living pain

A shopper compares the prices of the different brands of maize flour at a supermarket. FILE  

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Summary

• Perhaps it would more useful for the government to take a deep breath and go back to the basics – starting with finding the best formula available to start developing an orderly market.
• In the absence of such deep reflection, any incentives coming from policy channels will continue to be usurped by a small clique of people while the majority of Kenyans continue to suffer.

In the fullness of time, perhaps Kenyans will awaken to the fact that little of the efforts that the government is making to ease the price of key commodities did really make a difference.

This is mainly because of the chaotic and barely regulated marketplace where unscrupulous government officials, farmers, millers, transporters and retailers have the opportunity to use predatory practices to appropriate the benefits of any fiscal incentives government may have without offering consumers any relief.

While the state must keep trying to ease the prices of food given the pain that consumers are suffering, it makes no sense to do it the same way and expect a different result.

It will, without doubt fail as have past efforts.

Perhaps it would more useful for the government to take a deep breath and go back to the basics – starting with finding the best formula available to start developing an orderly market.

That is what will establish clear paths for the transmission of policies such as those meant to ease the price of commodities for the consumer.

In the absence of such deep reflection, any incentives coming from policy channels will continue to be usurped by a small clique of people while the majority of Kenyans continue to suffer.