What to watch out for from legislators in Parliament this year

The country will be watching how Parliament will perform in terms of executing tax related Bills as opposed to the last Financial Year where unpopular laws were passed.

In particular, Kenyans will be apprehensively waiting on how MPs will handle the Finance Bill, 2024.
The Finance Bill approved in June 2023, provided the revenue raising measures by the government, to facilitate the budget estimates for the Financial Year 2023/24.

Legislation paved the way for the introduction of a housing levy to fund the affordable housing initiative by the government and also increased the fuel levy to boost the fund ringfenced for fuel price stabilisation.

The tax measures proved out of favour to most Kenyans and the Act has since been challenged in court.
“I don’t expect new punitive measures in this year’s Finance Bill, we will touch on a few areas that will not affect the common Kenyan,” Finance Committee chairman Kimani Kuria.

Debate on the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) is also expected to dominate the session.
The report is expected to be tabled when the House resumes in early February, with debate anticipated to last over two months before it is subjected to a vote.

Another Bill expected to bring out heated debate among members will be the revised Affordable Housing Bill which is in the Second reading. Already, Opposition MPs have sounded their aversion to the revised Bill which seeks to amend contested areas.

Performance of the committees’ leadership will also be put to test after a lacklustre show by some of them.

Speaker Moses Wetang’ula has several times warned non-performing committee chairpersons and asked Majority and Minority leaders to rein in those who have failed to deliver.

Speaker particularly took issue with the leadership of the Public Petitions Committee led by Nimrod Mbai, which has a backlog of work having not dispensed a single petition since it was constituted.

Wetang’ula said Mbai’s absence from parliamentary sittings was impeding efforts to address pertinent committee matters.

In response, Leader of Majority Kimani Ichung’wah said: “I have given up on this matter. It is not the first time this issue has come before the House; the leadership has decided not to address the issues raised. I leave it to Members to decide the fate of this particular committee.” In general, the National Assembly performed well during the last session, having processed a total of 18 Bills.

Bills have since been assented into law by President William Ruto and form part of the 114 Bills that are at various stages of consideration.

Among the Bills approved by the House are crucial legislations relating to climate change, reforms in the health sector and government financing of priority projects.

The Appropriation Bill, 2023 and two Supplementary Appropriation Bills were also passed in June and November respectively, to provide funding for the government or reallocate funds to emergency efforts due to extreme drought and flooding incidents within the year.

In what perhaps demonstrates that climate change and its effects is now becoming a priority agenda for legislatures, the National Assembly also approved the Climate Change (Amendment) Bill which sought to amend the Climate Change Act, of 2016 to provide for the regulation of carbon markets.

It also created and enhanced the mandate of several institutions responsible for the regulation of the carbon markets.

Enactment of the law now makes Kenya compliant with the Paris Agreement which Kenya ratified and became party to in 2016.

On the other hand, the amended National Government-Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) Act, expanded the mandate of the fund to cater for projects such as climate mitigation, placing legislators at the centre of climate change mitigation efforts.

The amended Act allocates a maximum of five per cent of the funds allocated per constituency to climate change mitigation activities including afforestation, reforestation, grassroots sensitisation, and tree seedling production.