Treasury CS nominee John Mbadi answers questions during his vetting by Appointment Committee on Saturday. Photo/courtesy.
Cabinet Secretary nominee for Treasury John Mbadi has said that lack of public participation is to blame for rejection of Finance Bill 2024 by Kenyans.
Appearing before the National Assembly Committee on Appointments Saturday, Mbadi said if approved he will bring back some good provisions contained in the controversial finance bill.
“There are god provisions that have been lost in the Finance Bill [2024] that are not contentious and we can bring them as specific amendments with proper public participation. The problem we had was the public felt they were not listened to,” Mbadi said.
Automation of revenue collection
The former ODM chairman said that Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has outdated system that allows revenue losses arguing that there is a pretense that the revenue body is automated yet it’s not.
“We must ensure that we automate it [KRA] and automate it properly. Sometimes we pretend to be using automation yet we use outdated systems [that] are aiding leakages of revenue instead of helping us,” Mbadi noted.
Public debt
In Kenya, public debt has largely been shrouded in secrecy with the public having unclear information about the amount of money owed to foreign and domestic lenders.
Mbadi said that public debt is at worrying levels, adding that there is a need to make the amount of public debt known to Kenyans because they are the ones to pay it.
“Our public debt levels are worrying. We need to make our debt register a statutory document so that every Kenyan know how much we owe to who at what cost,” said Mbadi. “Kenyans should know that it’s not the government that owes China, World Bank and IMF, it’s them.”
On pending bills he said they will come up with a system that ensure these bills are paid in a way that the older bills are paid before the new ones. He said the system will “lock anyone who attempts to pay new bill ignoring an old one.”
Mbadi who is one of the four opposition members nominated to Ruto’s cabinet declared that his net worth is Ksh380 million.
