NASA has supported President Uhuru Kenyatta’s decision to cut the VAT on petroleum products from 16% to 8%. Addressing the press at Orange House on Tuesday ahead of the special parliamentary sitting, national assembly minority whip Junet Mohamed said the coalition supports the decision but the VAT should only last for a period of one year.
He said NASA has made key proposals, which if agreed upon, the full taxation can be extended for a further year if its necessary, “However, if nothing is done, on these proposals NASA will remove a motion in the next budget to scrap VAT on fuel entirely like it did this time,” said Junet. The coalition has called for genuine austerity measures across the board, which include the elimination of extravagance, elimination of waste, “There are too many practices and purchase that are wasteful because they are unnecessary or duplicative and often simply egoistic,” he said.
They’ve also called for completion of parastatal reforms, saying the government should eliminate others and merge unnecessary ones, something it was committed to accomplishing in the first place. The coalition has also faulted the government’s borrowing, saying it should tame its appetite for big borrowing, “We are borrowing too much at very oppressive terms. We must freeze any further borrowing, take stock of what we are, how sustainable the current borrowing is and resume borrowing on a more sustainable premise,” said Junet.
NASA added that the state must tame its ambition of infrastructural projects, outlining that there should be less of these projects and come up with more social welfare projects that affect people more directly on their lives.