President William Ruto assented to the Privatisation Bill 2023 on Monday during a Cabinet meeting in Kisumu. The new law effectively takes the oversight role in the privatisation of State corporations away from Parliament. Those powers have, instead, been given to Treasury Cabinet Secretary
The sale of non-performing State corporations, therefore, no longer requires the Privatisation Authority to get Parliamentary approval. Dr Ruto says this will remove bureaucracy and hasten deals that could take months, or years to conclude. The new Bill ensures that the sale of nonperforming corporations will be done through Initial Public Offers.
While this is acceptable to some extent, the new law curtails public participation, which is a requirement of the law, and gives the President and CS Treasury sweeping powers. There is fear that open sesame deals could open avenues for corruption. Moreover, it takes the edge off competitive bidding that ensures citizens get the best deals. The risk that unscrupulous, politically connected individuals could buy parastatals for a song, thus fleecing the public, increases tenfold.
We must guard against this. In 2008, there was public uproar over the secret sale of the Grand Regency Hotel, Nairobi, to Libyan investors for Sh4 billion, which was considered to be way below the market value. That sale landed the then Finance minister Amos Kimunya into trouble and, ultimately, censure by Parliament.
Parastatals are public properties and taxpayers have the right to know how corporations condemned as non-performing will be sold. All details about the bids and who eventually buys such corporations must be made public to enable citizens to determine whether the deals are worth the bother or not. Parliament, as the people's watchdog, has played this role quite well, ensuring that citizens do not end up with the short end of the stick in deals. But unfortunately, through wisdom or lack it, MPs deprived themselves of this mandate by passing the Privatisation Bill.
Now that Parliament's oversight role has been removed, we can only rely on the benevolence of the government to ensure that sale of public property is transparent and devoid of sleight of hand.
