Cut cost of government, cost of doing business to lower cost of living

One would like to believe that this is the logic, which informs our ongoing National Dialogue at Bomas of Kenya. Yes, this dialogue is the result of protests that were sequentially termed in local and international media as "electoral justice", "anti-government" and "cost of living" demos.

But it is also a dialogue that must address our long-term political ("who gets to do what?) and policy as governance ("the doing of the what") issues. On the first, methinks an audit of our 2022 election might better explain how the presidential loser won 27 out of 47 counties (57 per cent), 160 out of 291 constituencies (including diaspora, meaning 55 per cent), 803 out of 1451 wards (55 per cent), 24999 out of 46702 polling stations (54 per cent), 63 per cent of GDP but still lost the final tally.

That's the official data, before we get to apparent whistleblowers and potential loudspeakers.

The audit will not reverse the electoral result or the Supreme Court's carefree language, but it might help us better understand why a third of potential voters voted, another third registered to vote but didn't, and the final third didn't even bother to register. It may actually pay better attention to the KPMG audit report that had more questions than answers on IEBC's voter register and voter processes, systems and tech. Done carefully, honestly and independently, this audit might get proper answers on why IEBC procured two books for the presidential vote.

But that's the recent past. The current present asks questions of a Kenya Kwanza administration in place that looks like it is "winging it" on the cost of living answers that are fast adjusting Kenyans to a predatory state that loves to live large. The short story here is Kenya Kwanza has no theory of government, which means it is unable to explain its reliance on terrible (and terribly performing) fiscal and monetary tools when our fundamental cost of living answer is productivity.

Productivity is a large word. It is a fine combo between getting people to work (actual jobs), preparing people for work (education, health, innovation) and protecting non-work (social protection). As a cost of living answer, Kenya Kwanza is not even close to finding the question.

What we are also not being told is that this government needs a bit of inflation to manage its tight fiscal space. When taxes and debt are at limit, inflation is emergency oxygen for government.

But here's our local tragedy. The data shows that there were more than 100 cost of living protests across the world in 2022 - when we were busy with elections and "bottom-up ya mama mboga, mama fua, boda boda na yule soldier wa mtaa).

Meanwhile, the world made short-term cost of living support decisions, from the public purse (energy choices and rebates, reduced telco bills, education support, healthcare discounts) to private income (tax breaks, graduated or one-off income support and business loans and the like). Sorry, we were busy with the election.

Today, we are not translating our thinking beyond debt to productivity. We are also so busy making Kenya - as the government, not the people - our breakfast, lunch and dinner that we cannot contemplate that the cost of living never actually goes down; it's mitigated. That's how our dismal scientists (economists) better define a cost of living crisis as the decline in real incomes. So the long-term cost of living answer might lie in, say, more jobs and incomes? Pesa mfukoni?

That is a question for our Kenya Revenue Authority; a cost of living institution that is, through tech, rewriting its playbook from "rules to tax data" to "data to create tax rules". Basically, from "I walk on the road, I will pay tax" to "we tax you because the data says you walk". We call this Tax Administration 3.0. Remember, cost of living is price rises, which include taxes, and greed.

But this is detail. We have a political dialogue. It is natural that Kenya Kwanza dismissed these talks, while Azimio embraces them. Nobody wants lessons on cooking the home-baked maize meal dumpling we call ugali. How ironic, then, that cheaper ugali is what these talks must deliver!

Which is why the talks, despite arrogant dismissals by Kenya Kwanza nabobs, are not simply important but existential for Kenyans who took to heart loud campaign promises around, yes, a reduced cost of living, plus pledges promising no more hunger and many more jobs. In quite a few countries where cost of living protests prevail, popular (not populist) politics is winning.

It will happen here as well. But it will be more opportunistic than it is about opportunity. It will uproot a political leadership which appears to lack real answers that resonate with the people today and tomorrow. Let's fast forward to what our national dialogue should and could do.

As a preface, we must accept our impossible triangulation. Today we have a fiscal problem (debt) because we have an economic problem (colonial economic model) defined by a political problem (endless politics driven by battles between dynasties created as colonialism's poster child).

So, the first cost of living discussion begins with the cost of doing business. This is Kenya's fundamental economic issue, especially at micro-economic level. As a Ugandan classmate shared on our High School WhatsApp group this week, Kenya's economic miasma begins with settler-like ethnic arrogance that despises competition, markets and productivity as actual words.

Unfortunately, a "tax everything that moves" approach, as former US President Ronald Reagan famously described it, fails Kenya Kwanza's economic recovery legacy, tough times notwithstanding. This administration was to return us to the natural economic logic, which tells us that fiscal and monetary policy (and the IMF) are constraints, but economic policy is ideas.

It is also difficult to see how economic, or socio-economic policy works in a transactional administration. The short-term deal is always better than the long-term good. Which probably best summarises why every "clever" Kenya Kwanza proclamation cost us more, not less.

The second part speaks to the cost of government. This is an entire subject worth an article of its own (forthcoming), but, as I predicted last week, every government ministry, department and agency is raising, or thinking or raising, its prices for citizen services. Yet, as we know, government has no money of its own; its our taxes and fees. In short, our higher cost of living.

Our third cost of living discussion has not even begun to happen. Let's do this slowly. Officials measure our cost of living as inflation based on a fixed basket of goods (ie, we will always eat meat, pay rent, use transport). That we do not, or cannot, measure, as the US Bereau of Labour Statistics does, the change in spending choices (say, from meat to beans) is a national shame.

Which brings us to the end. Here is a view of irreducible minimums for the ongoing National Dialogue on the cost of living. First, we deal with the cost of doing business. Second, we deal with the cost of government. From which, third, we deal with the cost of living. The CPI is a useful starting point for determining our drivers of cost. But we need to graduate ourselves from the economic claptrap that differentiates food and fuel from other elements of our price index.

For the uninitiated, cost of living is as local as it is global; as economic as it is electoral. Actually, let's simplify this for leaders: cost of living is existential. Kenya Kwanza's manifesto prioritized it.

To repeat therefore, this is about lives and livelihoods, food and shelter, jobs and incomes. Kenyans don't really care about macro-economic babble and government's clear befuddlement.

Actually, the truth is Kenyans can no longer afford cat and mouse politics on our lives, livelihoods and living lifestyles. To repeat, cost of living is our fresh "throw out incompetence" moment. Fix the cost of doing business. Fix the cost of government. This begins to fix cost of living. Period.

-Kabaara is a management consultant