CS Mbadi to Kenyans : I am not Arrogant, I am Just an Honest Man!

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Now Muranga Fre how is government managing or reducing corruption a number of strategies but you know we have institutions that have been assigned the responsibility of investigating corruption prosecuting the same. I know there have been a lot of challenges but that is one step on the side of the executive because we are a democracy there's no single day that I will come out and start arresting or even shooting those who have been cor so what should the executive [laughter] do what we do are two things. Number one is to put up systems that make it very difficult to steal and that is why I spoke earlier and said talked about eprocurement I talked about treasure single account there is something we call a cruel accounting there is also something called zero base budget I am implementing those reforms so that when you attempt to steal it becomes very difficult I'm saying you will not be able to people will not be able to steal but it will be now very difficult so that is what the secret can do and that is what we are doing and you can see all those reforms have been started in this one year and going forward I'm sure they will yield results number two is to give some resources to these institutions that have been given the responsibility of fighting corruption and if you look at our budget we have enhanced the budget for most of these institutions on the question of is Kenya taxing people because of death pressure or any other reason it is a combination of reason number One, every country in the world, all countries tax because their people services must be given. The only thing is that in Kenya now we are taxing people and spending the bulk of the money in paying debt because over the years we accumulated huge debts that now has made our budget very very limited in terms of flexibility. Our budget is tight. Bank Covid if I may just tell you we expect to collect 3.63 trillion in the next financial year in terms of ordinary revenue and even if the money you get is enough if you get government services, when you get services, you pay all that money together, it is 3.63 63 trillion that is what we expect in 202627 out of that 1.5 trillion is going to pay debts, debt repayment together with pensions what we call CFS is going to take 1.5 trillion that leaves us with only 2.1 trillion my friend that 2.1 1 trillion salaries of government employees of the national government takes 1 trillion that leads you with 1.1 trillion that 1.1 1 trillion 420 billion will go to the count now how much 680 billion and that 680 billion we also talked about here the words of CDF 61 billion you are left with 600 billion or 610 the 610 now that is the money first we pay capitation free days secondary education 54 billion js 31 billion primary education 7 billion three I mean primary health care 19 billion uh emergency chronic and critical illnesses 4 billion pesa ya fertilizer subsidy 18 billion pesa cash transfers to the elderly 25 billion I can go on and on yet we have not bought anything for the police kgf we have not even supported them in terms of buying equipment and many others We have not even fueled the government vehicles if you add all that all the money we are collecting has ended for us to develop now we must go to borrow money is where kenya is that is why sometimes when you see people commenting they are talking like they don't understand that even as we talk about tax these two things we must balance we must talk about expenditure the budget we must finance the budget that budget is finance finance from where? Finance I mean the financing side is the taxes you pay and if it is not from there then you have to borrow and that is why we have decided some of the development projects must be removed from the target but taken to national infrastructure fund that is why we created national infrastructure fund let me continue kidog akula kula is it possible to establish a national public expenditure to get the data real time data. Yes, it is possible. And by the way, if you look at the website of the national treasury, there is a lot of information. First I want to tell you Kenyans through our constitution of 2010 right to information is a fundamental right. You should not even be begging. So if what is in the treasury website is not enough my brother we will improve it so that at the click of the button you can understand you can even see in your constituency I don't know where you come from which constituencyja constituency you can click and see in one financial year by just the click of the button which school got what money from CDF which water project is being done everything about Uya so that when you go home you can even walk to that school and see and see if the money that was allocated for two billion two million has not worked or has not worked that is the kind of country we want to [laughter] yes you are right this word about the phone has been misunderstood let me explain this word about the phone a little those who give us a phone or sell us a phone if you go to the shop and buy a phone from the bank These phones come from outside, they are bought from outside, they are brought here they are important. When you import the phone, I heard that this morning I went to the shop and they told me the phone comes from Endoret. When they get there, they are taxed, first there is a tax called import duty. The import duty is currently 25%.

[00:06:54]So the phone is included in the price of bringing the phone. You put 25%, you pay the second duty, you pay the exercise duty 10%, the third you pay the value added tax 16%, the fourth you pay something we call the import declaration fee 2.5%, then the last is the railway development levy 2%, if you add all of those together, if you add all of them, it's 55.5%, now if the phone was 100 you have to add 55,500 onto it, 155 before you even bring it to Nairobi. Now, someone buys a phone like that, they buy it as a wholesaler, they pay me the same tax, those same phones, they bring them to their shop, it takes up to three months before the phone is sold.

[00:07:49]He already paid the rent. Now we say, what's the point of doing this to stress people out like that? Let this person go buy a phone and stay at home.

[00:08:03]You don't pay V, you don't pay all those things. Bring it to your shop here in Dar es Salaam to stay for those three months. That day you will find a customer who has come to your shop to buy that phone and activate it, that is what we call activation, he wants to use it, now that's the tax, it's deducted immediately, and it's a single tax of 25%, if you do that, someone else reads quickly and says ex duty is increasing from 10 to 25%, they don't tell you [clearing throat] as 25%, there are others, we give, we give, we give, we give custom duty, we go out, import declaration fee, we give railway development level, so we give these other four, all of them, we give and we put a single tax on the phone of 25% and it is only paid when you buy the phone to use, not to sell it again if you are going to sell it, no, until four days until the day you use it, now someone says that's bad, now I don't know, and you know, that's what you're telling us, we simplify us, we don't want to simplify it, but if we try to simplify it, you say, eh, he wants to increase the tax, now what will we do as a government, how will we do it? This politics has entered this country, it has destroyed our country, this is a good thing. Even if you are told to give us food, [laughter] you will say where does that food come from? Have you put poison in the food or is it good food?

[00:09:48]Please let's start trusting other Kenyans and stop the propaganda.

[00:09:57]Sorry I'm a biting behind but I want now. The budget deficit is too high. I agree with you. And I've even answered that question, just look at how I've distributed that budget. You see we have no space that is why sometimes you tell him why don't you reduce expenditure there is no place even if you ask people here where should we cut the only thing we will tell you cut the state budget now the state house is the only one it finances all the things in Kenya even if you look at the state is small even if we cut everything let's say we are closing the state we don't want to have the state anymore if we close even that budget will not be enough to cover the education of our children there is no we have very limited leg room headro at all at all in this budget let me quickly look at the audit on irrigation pro schemes I love that that we will have to look at mineral audit but again there are a lot of reforms we are taking we are putting in place for mineral budget for judiciary to be increased we have done a lot to the judiciary by the way we have increased the budget And even I have already negotiated with them for them with Walba to give us a lot of money over 20 billion to renovate first we are starting with Supreme Court.

[00:11:20]Our Supreme Court is sitting like I don't know what, there's not even a toilet for me. Our judges have no toilet they have to look for toilet anyway everyone. That is the truth. Imagine judges of this appeal we are also working to make sure that of is improved. And finally there are tribunals which don't have courses. So we are going to reaffirm the judiciary. We have had two meetings with the chief justice with the team probably the first minister to hold a meeting with the chief justice and the judiciary twice before we did the budget and they are happy to talk to them. Now on budget for sports I agree but again look we are not only increasing money to the sports we are also looking at how the money that goes to the sport is prudently used.

[00:12:28]kasarani in 1984 I think 84 84 towards 87 before the fourth all African games that time Nimrod we have never had any stadium of international standard constructed in this it is this government that has done Talanta which is the biggest nowantau C I have heard other people say nothing has been done. Let me ask them first, apart from Tanta, if you go to almost every county, there is a stadium being constructed almost in every county, where was this money, where was this money before you even went, because sports goes with culture in Kenya, since KICC was built, there has not been any conference facility built in Kenya for so many years now. You can see if you move across Bomas. I wish you people could have the opportunity to fly over Bomas. A world class international facility is coming up which is going to sell Kenya as a regional hub for conference facilities. Then you find people saying, "I don't know, Ruto hasn't worked for a while."

[00:13:52]Let's just be realistic. Let's look at the truth today. These words, these words of F [laughter] Wait, wait, calm down, wait, I know even the new ones, I know, speaker, speaker, tell your people, minister of wait, wait, I don't want to excite you and let's continue. By the way, Kenya is a democratic state. Everyone has [laughter] the right to say whatever they want. You listen to your partner, you also want your partner to listen to you, right? Now the words of truth are just truth and trouble and I'm telling you it is one thing one thing that we cannot hide away from. The cost of living is rising as we speak today because of the rising prices. I have said it before, I see someone else said today that he wants to be good but he should be less arrogant. You know one thing I realized in Kenya is that they are mistaking honesty truthfulness with arrogance. If I I shouldn't tell you this thing is green when I can see very clearly this thing is black this thing is red it can't be green or blue.

[00:15:27][laughter] What is happening about the prices of F?

[00:15:32]If you are lucky enough to watch CNN, if you watch Al Jazeera, the fuel problem is worldwide, it is true, and in other countries at this time you cannot get it. If you go here, Ethiopia has a problem. If you go to Burundi, it is a problem. If you go to Mozambique, it is a problem. Rwanda has a problem. Now here we are talking about the post, but the availability is there [laughter]. If you go to a petrol station, you will find some people telling us to give up on this G2G, that is, it is not right to advise Kenya to go to G at this time of prices, why because at least we have a contract with three oil marketing companies, even if they buy fuel from the Middle East, they go to find somewhere else because they have a contract with suppliers. If you do n't have a contract with any supplier, who will hold you responsible if they don't bring it here? If you leave it, anyone can bring it. If everybody decides not to bring, how will you help? Now let me come back to pricing. There are some people who say the government has done nothing. First, we lowered the VAT rate from 16% to 8%. At that 8% we lose 12 billion in the form of revenue every month because of that but we said because we want the oil price to come down let's not forget the oil price was at least moderate and what subsidy fund the petroleum development fund that subsidy fund had 17 billion by the time this crisis started The first month of April when the prices went up we used 6.2 billion from that fund. We could not use all of it because you do n't know about tomorrow. You don't even know if Trump is this or that. You see, sometimes he says we are getting closer to understanding each other, other times he says we are going to beat those people, so it is confusion in the whole world. Nobody even knows how far it will go. So what happens with us who have no control over the world? We have to prepare. So how do we prepare? We use part of that money one month. We remain with the term to use the following month. The following month we put 5 billion out of the remaining 10. And we have even added more because of the stri that happened the other day. Now we have a little left, but we will make sure before we go to June there is money to subsidize further so that the prices don't increase too much. We are praying that the prices come down like now when Trump folks went the prices started coming down. It is my hope that the prices will come down but let us politicize this thing. We send our children to the street for the same thing even if you yourself were to be put in straight out maybe you have it but now you want to make it [joy] a big issue is who else is taking your book [laughter] let me finish on civic education the challenges I agree with you probably we need to put some budget to God I wish we had enough money.

[00:19:01]We should recognize whose parliament.

[00:19:04]We may need to recognize someone's parliament.

[00:19:08]Members of Parliament, I am talking to members of parliament, this is something we have some structure like you know we had this youth council you know it is recognized in law and the elections are recognized. Probably now we need to recognize the people's parliament in we make it a condition.

[00:19:33]before the parliament passes any legislation and contest but let them be contest creators of truth other people's job is to insult people their job is to put people in the past people who are dead finally [laughter] finally very finally let me talk about the statement of not let me talk about that statement of let me tell you i don't know who said that has I have never seen a stupid person like you completely let me tell you not a smart person he is smart he is a wise person come first let me tell you listen to me taxation rule [laughter] taxation law calls for what we call equity equity is not equal it means those who have more money should pay more taxes because for you to have money you must be benefiting a lot from the economy than someone who does not have money for me to have that big plug it means that there is somewhere I am gaining from in the economy. Now there is need first to tax wealth that is what the law says you start with wealth before you go to trade trade should not be tax you tax wealth then you go to income then find trade. Trade should not be taxed income should be taxed but at a lower rate what should be taxed is wealth but when you attempt to tax wealth because wealth is very difficult also to find those wealth people are hiding here and they are using you to incite you. to go to the street to protect them. If you listen to this discussion going on about data protection, it is not about you. No one is calling you or asking for your details like who is your girlfriend, who is your boyfriend? Nobody is asking. What we are saying is KRA should have the authority to look to check our financial transactions.

[00:21:45]If I have 50 million in my account and I cannot explain it, [laughter] KA should ask me to surrender part of it. After that, we should not protect these people. These people are what we call money launderers. They are the ones who want money to be in the bank. They are buying things. They are buying houses and no one is asking them to pay. And if you just sell a little bit of vegetables, someone comes to your door asking for money. I own about 20 houses and I haven't paid the rent and I'm buying them with the houses. That is why we are saying KRA in this bill please support it. I know it will be fought because these people have the muscle they even have the money. They will come to you and you tell you oh data protection which data is financial data can never be secret. Financial data should be known by KA. If your data is known by KRA, every year you are filling a form.

[00:22:42]You leave a form saying I got this money, I paid this sh. Why is someone making money in millions sometimes millions and what is his secret? How can financial data be secret? Let's cheat you that we are proposing things that will compromise data privacy. There is no data privacy.

[00:23:03]It is people who have unexplained wealth like the one you want me to touch who don't want that unexplained wealth to be touched.

[00:23:11]tax collector and the viewer if you see the minister standing and yes mj Yeah.