The Kenya Business and Economics Times

        Photo credit: First 100 days podcast. In the song Good Times , rapper Mbithi sings, “ utamu wa nyama choma nikukulia kwa mbao…,” I’d want to tweak that a little to, “ utamu wa mutura nikukulia kwa mbao…,” sounds better this way yeah? At least that’s what I thought when I passed by my mutura guy’s place last Tuesday as I hurried home to catch the presidential debate. It’s what I think to myself every time I eat mutura from his place. Because come on, where else would mutura be served from if not from a wooden chopping board? I’ve seen gentrified folk post photos on the gram of their mutura being served in some fancy bowls in the posh restaurants they patron. I want to state it here, categorically, that that’s an affront to mutura . It’s against culture and tradition. Heck, it’s even unconstitutional. Njoro, our street lawyer can attest to this. Njoro is a diehard patron of the Mutura base I frequent. He’s supposed to have graduated from law school like 1...

  With the government’s subsidy on maize flour in place, ugali sosa is set to make a comeback, much to the delight of many Kenyans. However, the move has elicited vociferous debate, on social media platforms with a section of Kenyans terming it to be a political move now that we are on the cusp of the general elections, while others query why the government couldn’t have intervened much earlier. The bottom line however is, if it happens that on your next visit to kwa Mathe the first ugali serving does nada to calm the pangs of hunger, you can afford to say “ Mathe, leta sosa!” without batting an eye lid. In the previous week’s post, I had opined that instead of using price controls to check the rising costs of living, as a section of Kenyan tweeps were earlier clamouring for, the government should instead use subsidies to lower the prices of key food commodities. Considering that ugali is a staple in the diets of many Kenyans, the move to subsidise its retail prices is laudab...

  Kenya’s year-on-year inflation rate accelerated to 7.9 per cent in June 2022- the highest level it has scaled since August 2017. A closer look at the consumer price index shows that the jump in inflation was largely driven by considerable upward movements in the costs of food and non-alcoholic beverages as well as the rise in fuel prices after a price review by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) in mid June. In early June, there was a clamour by Kenyans on Twitter for the government to intervene in curbing the rising costs of living by imposing price controls on key commodities such as food. While the distress by Kenyans who have been pushed between a rock and a hard place by the rising costs of living is understandable, it is important to understand the ramifications of price controls. Price controls are government regulations on prices or their rates of change and may take the form of setting either maximum or minimum prices. I shall make references to the...

  According to a report released by the Nairobi Metropolitan Transport Authority (NaMATA) in September 2019, vehicles stuck in traffic potentially cost Kenya about $1 billion a year in lost productivity. In May of that year, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport James Macharia, had announced that the government had dedicated sh 200 billion to projects meant to reduce traffic congestion in Nairobi area. Though there was mention of the rolling out of a bus rapid transport system and the laying of new railway tracks, overtime, the focus seems to have been heavily on the expansion and recalibration of roads within and around the city if the construction of several by passes and the expressway are anything to go by. However, urban economists argue that the construction of more and wider roads does not necessarily translate to reduced traffic congestion. If anything, building more roads further compounds the problem as it encourages more commuters to use cars to commute to work in the lo...

  About a month ago, during   president Uhuru Kenyatta’s   last Madaraka day address in office, he pointed out that since his government came into office in 2013, the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had risen from sh4.5 trillion in 2013 to close to sh13 trillion presently, making Kenya’s economy the   6 th   largest in Africa, up from position 12. While the growth in the GDP numbers is laudable, there are pertinent questions to ask about the same. For starters, it is expected that growth in GDP, which represents the growth of a country’s market output, will automatically result in the reduction of unemployment rates as more jobs are created. The creation of more jobs leads to a rise in per capita incomes which consequently leads to a higher standard of living among the population. How then is it that, for the longest time now, social media, newspapers, radio and TV news reports have all been awash with stories of Kenyans lamenting about the high costs ...