How did Mt Kenya MPs get county’s GDP information?

A group of parliamentarians from Mount Kenya region recently demanded more resources from the national treasury because they generate “60 per cent of Kenya’s GDP”. It is difficult to know where they got their data from. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

By  Mungai Kihanya

What you need to know:

  • Leaders in many regions have been clamouring for additional resource allocation from the national government.
  • The argument being that too much tax revenue is being retained in Nairobi and dished out to politically favoured regions.
  • My reaction to these demands is that tax revenue is collected from individuals and businesses operating in the counties.
  • Therefore, instead of waiting for the tax money to be sent to Nairobi and then returned to the grass roots, the county governments can simply collect it directly

A group of parliamentarians from Mount Kenya region held a meeting recently and demanded more resources (read, money) from the national treasury because they generate “60 per cent of Kenya’s GDP”.

I have heard Nairobi politicians claiming that the capital city accounts for two thirds of national GDP.

Now when we add the two thirds (about 67 per cent) from Nairobi to the 60 per cent from Mount Kenya, we get 127 per cent. Obviously, these numbers are not adding up — literary!

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Even though the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) publishes poverty reports annually, these do not carry information about the GDP of the counties. Thus, it is difficult to know where the Mt Kenya parliamentarians got their data from. I suspect they just took a quick guess to make a political statement.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that leaders in many regions around the country have been clamouring for additional resource allocation from the national government. The argument being that too much tax revenue is being retained in Nairobi and dished out to politically favoured regions.

My reaction to these demands is that tax revenue is collected from individuals and businesses operating in the counties. Therefore, instead of waiting for the tax money to be sent to Nairobi and then returned to the grass roots, the county governments can simply collect it directly.

How? The county governments can easily raise their levies and fees. This will reduce the profit made by businesses and hence the tax payable to national government goes down!

Unfortunately, such a move wouldn’t be politically expedient. So, no politician would even suggest it.

***

The examination season is here with us again. As usual, media reports have focused on the few isolated lapses in the organisation. But organising exams is a monumental logistical task. Let me try and paint the correct picture.

There were about one million pupils taking the KCPE examination this year and another 660,000 sitting the KCSE examination. The KCPE examination was done in 27,000 centres around the country and 10,000 for the KCSE.

Some 65,000 invigilators were engaged to run the KCPE exam, overseen by 27,000 supervisors. In KCSE, the numbers are 37,000 and 10,000, respectively.

Each KCPE candidate sat for seven papers and every KCSE one about 15. In total, there are about seven million KCPE papers to be marked (Two million of them manually) and about 10 million in the KCSE exams (all to be marked manually).

If it turns out that 1,000 papers have mistakes, would that be reason to bash the exam managers? Work out the proportions and decide for yourself.

 

www.figures.co.ke; Twitter: @MungaiKihanya

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