Am amazed we are considering oil revenues yet it is not proven in the first place that the reserves are commercially viable! What if we reckon them and then they ont materialise? Si exactly hivyo ndivyo M7 alifanya in Ug, spending petro money he anticipates to earn and raiding public coffer off a cool USD 740M to buy 6-8 Su-30MK2 jet fighters?

My concern is that we get a trimmer budget (remember fewer ministries <15)that we can afford so that we don't rely on donors at at all to plug any deficit - i dont want our country to end up with crazy donor conditionalities like Burundi which relies on them for almost 50% of its budget.

For us the solution is to seal loopholes - to bring more guys under the tax net and ensure teh funds are actually well-utilised si ukora kama ya FPE,NHIP, NSSF, etc.
And I hope they allocate more money to defence - kenya needs to upgrade its military capability now that our geo-political stature is growing.

Why can't we move to reduce spending and put our priorities in order? Increasing taxation shouldn't be the only solution.

Increasing taxes makes life harder for the ordinary mwanainchi. Corruption could also increase since if there is more money to be spent..there will be angloleasing and NHIF type of corruption activities.

The capital gains tax could also be introduced. I think it will be an impediment to growth unless it is well structured

I concur.
Our govt needs serious lessons on frugality/ austerity to reduce doemstic expenditure -for example those nasty sh*tty commissions of this and that that keep gobbling funds aimlessly and dont deliver at all. And all those ministries!!

One other very sad aspect of the KShs 1.4T budget however, is that >70% is for meeting recurrent expenditure like salaries and admin. costs rather than for capex programmes. We surely need to change this structure - can't all those Treasury mandarins surely see this?!

GDP growth expected to rise by 5.2% in 2012 - Must be smoking some good sh** this FinMin.

I like what he smoked, "inflation to single digit level in a few months time due to CBK policies" says Githae

10 years later we still continue to milk the free primary education line. While I understand the reasoning and the impact it brought about, the interface which is in dire need of expansion is transition from high school to tetiary education. That is the point where we have lots of people who are not equiped with any meaningful life skills in the society.