Privatisation talk: The devil is in the detail

Privatization was an early slogan on Kenya Kwanza's lips in its first days, though its campaign manifesto mentions it once, in the context of an Infrastructure Fund to support long-term asset building needs from surplus privatisation proceeds. Public-private partnership (PPP) is an emerging catchphrase, yet mentioned only twice - for water and sports - in the manifesto.

But the 2023 Budget Policy Statement (BPS) offers the unstated feeling that these buzzwords are central to an IMF-supported Kenya Kwanza fiscal consolidation agenda framed around the modern notion of a political, not technical, set of medium-term fiscal rules dependent on faster revenue than spending growth that delivers the enhanced fiscal balance we need to better manage our debt.