Privatisation talk: The devil is in the detail

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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.