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Christmas is always a time for making merry, enjoying time with family and friends and dare I say booming time for both small and big consumer business.

 In fact, critics have equated Christmas festivities with consumerism and commercialism. Growing up, this is the period we would look forward to because of gifts, new clothes, and the opportunity to travel and visit relatives.

To the business community, Christmas is a time of great business. But as we approach Christmas this time round things are thick. A friend who is in business in the coastal city of Mombasa just summed up how dire the situation is.

He has realised, just like many Kenyans, that his business is not doing well. You see, this is a businessman and a business coach. So, he has the presence of mind to pay himself a salary and has a clear distinction between his personal and business cash.

Now, my friend has realised that his salary has reduced and, therefore the many favours he would advance to family and friends cannot be advanced anymore, even for those seeking help for basic needs like food, medical bills and rent.

This simply suggests that from the depressing situation of just one businessperson expenditure of many will go down. It is not the help folks, it is the spiral cut down in expenditure. For him it is as simple as – my salary from the business is over, and even if my business seems to be having floating cash, I am broke.

But away from the personal cash it appears things are tough on the business front. Now, this friend has not just cut on spending his personal cash, but also tremendously on his business expenses. Trips he used to take around doing business in his car are no longer tenable. One such trip, in his own words, cost Sh500 by bus, but when he drives the cost goes up to Sh2,000.

He has decided to be prudent and frugal and go the bus route. The bigger picture here is that lots of people are spending less which is a good thing if they were making more because making more and spending less means they are saving and investing. But the sad story is that we are all spending less because we are making far much less.

Whether you are a salaried employee whose payslip has been raided by the Finance Act 2023 and increase in loans interests’ rates from banks or in business the experience is the same.  In fact, from November we start the festivities with the controversial Black Friday, but with this depressing situation most consumer good businesses are in for a rude shock. To face the truth, the economy Kenya Kwanza says it is stabilising is sinking.

From whichever measure you use – NSE data, sinking Kenya shilling, currency bills and bonds whose uptake are depressingly low, especially for the medium- and long-term bonds. For short term bills the rates are high but the investors seem to be less interested either because they do not trust fiscal policies of this regime or they simply have no money to invest.

Time for the country’s leadership to take a serious look at the fiscal policy because the current tax regime is not helping anyone. Not the common Mwanainchi, not big and small business, not the big corporate organisations and interestingly not the tax collector. At some point the politics and bravado must be put into perspective.

 Even Azimio and its leadership should go beyond the bi-partisan talks and offer viable alternative solutions even if they are not in government to implement. We see many politicians talk about Kalonzo Musyoka as the saviour come 2027, which seems to excite many Kenyans.

But from an economic perspective and the suffering of Kenyans perhaps we need to see more of how the alternative government will address the current depressing economic situation and the plight of the people.  

— The writer is a PhD candidate in political communication