Friday, May 04, 2007

A cost-benefit approach in Kenya?

Recent initiatives by the GoK have led to some head scratching. Free secondary tuition fees is to some a missed opportunity to re-look at the Education needs of a growing economy e,.g. why not put this cash into a state of the art ICT university? Spending upto Sh10bn to upgrade JKIA may be more expensive than say upgrading one of the smaller airports and thus enhancing air transport within and out of the country. So how does GoK arrive at decisions?-probably it’s all about affordability. Cost benefit approach is not just about the monetary aspect but the macro-economic, social, political and environmental impacts. So for:
Constitution changes: We've spent sh8-10bn and 15years+ of agitation and still have nothing to show for it. However, if the original question had been what are the socio, economic, political, legal and environmental consequences of updating our constitution through incremental changes rather than one large overhaul maybe halfway to some achievements.
Anti-corruption drive: The impact of the failed drive to bring down corruption and convictions in major corruption cases is enormous in monetary terms, but also socially (it becomes an acceptable form of achieving your aspirations in life); politically (the corrupt want to get in power so they can continue to be corrupt, once in power don’t want to leave because of fear); environmentally (willy-nilly allocation of land and other resources thus no Ngong/Karura forest, Nairobi dam is a sewer).
Million political parties: Failure to create thresholds for forming political parties means politics becomes a way of life for many, it’s commercialised, no ideas-parties.
Lack of separation of powers: Means judiciary and its decisions are compromised and outcomes of cases have social impacts (e.g. bribing a judge to favor you in a marital dispute case), politically (e.g. politically-instigated corruption cases); economically (commercial decisions).
Stalled power sector reforms: As China, South Korea and others have found out, its far harder to increase energy generation capacity, institute conservation measures once your economy id in full throttle. Continued subsidisation of energy generation will eventually slowdown economic growth, as will the slow implementation of a separate rural electrification company
Urban policy: 50% of Nairobians live in slums and this may continue in other large towns as well. To a large extent, this is due to no urban policy looking at issues such as urban economic push (i.e. developing rural-based industries to slowdown rural-urban migration), services, housing policy and will have social (insecurity, social breakdowns); economic (concentration of wealth-generation in Nairobi conurbation) and environmental impacts (smog, polluted rivers, air quality etc).
And such an approach need not been lengthy or be costly, cabinet ministers meet every week and we do have an economic planning ministry
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1 comment:

pesa tu said...

Agree on CFC and Equity but KCB still has IT problems and lots of competition.
TPS- am not too sure about tourism