National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich, today presented the 2019/2020 financial budget, estimated at Sh3.1 trillion, in fulfilment of the requirements of Section 40 of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012.
As far as history is concerned, the 2019/2020 Financial budget is the most expensive budge Kenya since independence. Inside Rotich’s budget was the bulk of spending to be used in repaying debt, recurrent spending on items like salaries, travel and entertainment at Sh 1.226 trillion, and development spending on items like road upgrades, dam building and power transmission estimated at Sh701 billion.
To meet the financial budget revenues, CS Rotich proposed a number of amendments including a 10 per cent excise duty on betting activities, increased excise duty for alcohol and cigarettes by 15 per cent among others. While at it, he mentioned that the Bodaboda sector, despite its contribution to the economy has been getting away with murder as many pedestrians and passengers have been left victims of their accidents.
“Bodaboda transport has become an important sector in our economy. It is one of the largest employers of our Youths, and also provides cheap and convenient transport for Kenyans, despite the above benefits, this mode of transport has proven to be very risky to riders, passenger and even pedestrians. Accident victims from the lower society are left to seek financial assistance for treatment from friend and relatives since this bodabodas are not insured,” he noted.
He proposed an amendment that will make the operator liable for the passengers and pedestrians accidents through a third party insurance cover.
“In order to mitigate against this risk, I propose to amend the Insurance Motor Vehicle, third-party risk certificate of insurance rules to require all passenger carrying bodabodas and tuk-tuks to have an insurance cover for passengers and pedestrians,” he said.
In the proposed amendment, on the third party insurance cover by Bodaboda riders, you can bet that the transport system will be thrown off balance for a while, with hiked bodaboda fare. According to economics the burden imposed by the government to bodaboda operators will be transferred directly to consumers, who will have no choice but to dig deep into their pockets to access this most affordable means of transport.