Finance Bill 2025: When will Kenyans engage in broader Budget discussion?

National Treasury Cabinet SecretaryJohn Mbadi during the launch of Economic Survey 2025 at KICC, Nairobi, on May 6, 2025. [Kanyiri Wahito, Standard]

When it comes to matters fiscus, we have come full circle in a single generation. Some will recall the 1990s, when the key subject for debate during the Budget season was the Finance Bill, or specifically, tax changes. We then went into a democratic phase where we paid attention to the spending side of the budget, and more recently debt. Yet government remained "Baba na Mama" of the economy, a reminder that our 2010 Constitution is not ingrained in our Kanu mindsets.

We have come full circle because, if we split the current final phase of the 2025/26 Budget season into four parts, we will spend 60 per cent of our time discussing a Finance Bill which is one part of the revenue question. We will allocate 10 per cent to debt, five per cent to expenditure and focus the other 25 per cent on "the many things government needs to do for us whether or not we have read the Finance Bill or draft budget estimates". This is harsh, but it is true today.