Kenyan parliamentary business is driven by committees, which scrutinize proposals and present them to the house for a debate and vote.
A Kenyan parliamentary committee has accepted the president’s proposal to halve an unpopular new value-added tax on petroleum products to 8 per cent and the whole house would vote on the proposal later, a senior parliamentary leader said on Thursday.
The government faced a fuel dealers’ strike, anger among commuters and a lawsuit after transport and fuel prices jumped when the 16 per cent value-added tax on all petroleum products entered into force on Sept. 1. “They have agreed with the president,” house majority leader Aden Duale told Reuters.
Kenyan parliamentary business is driven by committees, which scrutinize proposals and present them to the house for a debate and vote. President Uhuru Kenyatta said last week that further delaying the tax, which was passed into law in 2013 but never implemented, would compromise the government’s ability to fund planned social welfare and development programmes.
Lawmakers from Kenyatta’s Jubilee party have promised to back his proposals when they are put to a vote, but some opposition lawmakers have opposed them. Jubilee enjoys a comfortable majority in the house.