The president of the republic of Kenya William Samoei Ruto on Sunday evening defended the Kenya kwanza administration’s tax plan for the next financial.
Speaking to journalists at statehouse Nairobi, the head of state said Kenya is not one of the countries that are highly taxed like France that has tax rate at 45 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).
After having given other exampled From Africa, he said at 14 percent of the GDP, Kenya is one of the least taxed countries in Africa and the world at large.
However, the president’s statement he made during the presidential debate last year ahead of the august 9 presidential election came back to haunt him.
In that debate, he had argued against overtaxing fuel products saying the moment he takes over power he would relook into fuel tax with a view to lowering the price of fuel.
However, after taking over, Ruto has promised to increase vat on fuel from 8 percent to 16 percent in the proposals contained in the finance bill.
Asked about why the double Speak, the head state Blamed the change of mind on the fresh revelations that his economic team made after taking Over.
He said the problem in Kenya was a dollar issue and not fuel as it had been wrongly diagnosed.
“When I came into office, I found a huge crisis of fuel. That whole subsidy story you hear, it was just a pledge. One thing I did was to have an economic team around me. We discovered that there wasn’t a fuel problem, it was a misdiagnosis. The problem was a dollar problem because there was fuel that had come but the oil marketers could not find the dollars to go and buy'”, said the president.
He defended the tax saying it will bring sanity In the petroleum industry adding that it’s better to lower borrowing and increase taxes instead of going into bankruptcy.
What are your views on this? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments on this on our comments platform.
President William Ruto: When I came into office, I found a huge crisis of fuel. That whole subsidy story you hear, it was just a pledge. One thing I did was to have an economic team around me. We discovered that there wasn’t a fuel problem, it was a misdiagnosis. The problem was… pic.twitter.com/2dEKun4xpL
— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) May 14, 2023
Content created and supplied by: @yokeabu (via Opera
News )
