Karua accuses Ruto of waging an economic war against Kenyans
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Karua accuses Ruto of waging an economic war against vulnerable Kenyans through the proposed finance bill 2023
Karua accuses Ruto of waging an economic war against vulnerable Kenyans through the proposed finance bill 2023.
Martha Karua, the leader of the Narc Kenya party, has charged that the Kenya Kwanza administration is using the Finance Bill 2023 to wage an economic war against its citizens.
Karua claims that because the government has failed to carry out its agenda of lowering the prices of commodities, the economic war is mostly directed at vulnerable populations.
“You would expect that during these hard times, there would be measures to cushion the vulnerable, you would expect that food items, critical items, you remember that Azimio has been on the forefront of asking for the lowering of the cost of living actually demanding for the lowering of the cost of living,” Karua said.
Karua added that the proposals in the Finance Bill would on the contrary raise the cost of living.
“This bill is a contempt card on these demands because its native effect will be to push the cost of living upwards,” she said.
Touching on the VAT, Karua says the increment of fuel VAT from 8 percent to 16 percent would consequently affect other sectors of the economy.
“When you tax-exempt things that were zero-rated once again the effect is pushing the prices up of essential items such as medicine, critical medicine that with the current status of NHIF, it means the average person will not have access to critical medicine.”
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The Azimio la Umoja co-principal further accused government of shifting focus from the people, to maintain pompous and unnecessary expenditure on government officials including the office of the President.
She cited the heavily budgeted global tours by the president and some section of government officials.
“This is happening in a context where nonessential expenditure for the office of the president, for the office of the deputy president, for the prime cabinet secretary, luxury items, they have pushed the budget up for travel the example being led by the office of the president, they have pushed the amount for the purchase of non-essential items,” Karua remarked.
The Finance Bill, according to Karua, will regressively erode people’s capacity to support themselves and their families, endangering the lives of citizens and possibly even resulting in deaths from lack of access to necessities like food and life-saving medicine.
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