The underlying problem in Budget is lack of sound public finance policy

President Kenyatta’s Memorandum dated September 13, to Parliament was well written and argued. He informed Parliament that his government needed the funds from Petroleum VAT to finance its programmes. He advised Parliament that exempting Petroleum from VAT increased the costs of distributors as they could not claim input VAT. He pleaded with Parliament to retain the housing and money transfer levies to finance his Big Four housing agenda. 

Parliament failed. Its failure was not the inability to marshal numbers to defeat the President’s proposals. Parliament failed to grab the rare opportunity, when public attention was fully focused on it, to debate the government’s public finance policy.  Instead, Members of Parliament stage managed the debacle of September 20 to please both the public and the President.