Good morning,
President Ruto’s Cabinet has asked MPs to raise the public debt cap to Sh17 trillion.
The Cabinet passed a resolution allowing President William Ruto’s administration to increase the country’s national debt. That means the Kenya Kwanza government can raise the debt ceiling from the current Sh10 trillion approved by Parliament.
By December, Kenya’s total debt stood at Sh9.6 trillion, which was only Sh400 million shy of the borrowing ceiling set by legislators.
This effectively meant that the Ruto administration, which came to power after the August election, had little headroom to borrow for either development or recurrent expenditure. This came against a background of increased allocation to debt repayment, which consumes about 60 per cent of all revenues collected by the taxman.
Although the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has been raising more taxes in the last two quarters ending December 2022, the government has piled pressure on the agency to widen the tax bracket.
Only yesterday, the KRA board chair, Anthony Mwaura, revoked all tax reliefs in a press release shared on Twitter.
This is likely to hurt all workers who enjoy tax reliefs, including those based on household sizes, owner-occupier reliefs for private sector employees with mortgages, motor vehicle import taxes for people with disabilities and those returning to Kenya after working abroad, and all other reliefs that businesses and individuals had been entitled to until yesterday.
According to KRA, over the last five years, it had given tax reliefs worth Sh610 billion, meaning that every year, companies and individuals benefit from an average of Sh1.22 billion in unpaid taxes.
Meanwhile, here are news stories making headlines on Opera News today;
Raila Odinga Now Issues Three Conditions That Must be Met if he Were to Hold Talks With Ruto
Defiant former prime minister Raila Odinga in an interview at KTN issued three conditions that must be met by the Kenya Kwanza government if he were to hold any talks with president William Ruto.
This is according to a report covered by the publication done on Wednesday’s Standard which alleges the three demands Mr. Odinga has issued to President William Ruto.
The report intimates that President William Ruto must first open the independent electoral and boundary commission ( IEBC) servers for him to have talks with the ODM principal.
Expert: Jacob Ocholla is related to the late Mwai Kibaki
A man who claims in court to be former President Mwai Kibaki’s biological son intends to rely on a finding by a human pathology expert that he resembles Kenya’s third President.
To prove his case, Mr Jacob Ocholla is banking on a forensic report by the expert, Mr Zakayo Limiri Thaimuta.
In an affidavit filed at the High Court in Nairobi, Mr Thaimuta said he compiled the report dated January 19, 2023, following a request by Mr Ocholla to assess and comment on the similarity between himself and the late Kibaki.
Uhuru allies: Here is our plan to make Ruto a one-term President
Retired President Uhuru Kenyatta’s loyalists in the Mt Kenya region have told Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua to brace for a titanic battle for his survival as the region’s kingpin and possible successor to President William Ruto.
They have vowed that their main agenda is to make President Ruto’s a one-term administration. Further, they have said that they have an elaborate scheme that will see the Mt Kenya region build its own formidable political party, complete with new grassroots leaders who will forge alliances with like-minded regions to seize power.