By Dr Paul Bundi Human beings are endowed with remarkable resilience, which can only be broken when they choose to give up. Says Viktor Frankl in his seminal book, Man's Search for Meaning; ''it is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future-sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in thd most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.'' Man's life is primarily driven by the desire for future, the unshakable belief that the future holds promise. We invariably cease to live when we think we have hit a dead end, or that there's nothing more to be had by living. Theoretically, there is no limit to man's achievement, and that is what drives men to wake up and strive day after day. The opposite is spiritual, psychological death, which manifests way ahead of physical death. Lesson? Losing today doesn't mean losing always. You can lose 10 times and win the 11th time. Or, you...
"The National Treasury cannot show any infrastructure that consumed the Eurobond funds"-CS Henry Rotich says
The National Treasury cannot show any infrastructure that consumed the Eurobond funds, Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich said last Thursday, walking away from an earlier promise to lay bare details of the mega spending at the centre of political row with opposition leader Raila Odinga.
projects.
“The ministries cannot differentiate whether the money they have received from the Exchequer came from VAT, income taxes, customs duties, excise taxes, domestic borrowing or the Eurobond,” Mr Rotich said in an interview, adding that the Treasury’s role is to disburse funds to the ministries according to their request and in line with the approved budgets.
Mr Rotich said line ministries were the custodians of their spending and are accountable to Parliament – effectively exonerating his department from responsibility over use of the Eurobond proceeds.
The Treasury’s about-turn came a fortnight after Mr Rotich issued a three-week ultimatum to all State departments to publish details of how they spent Eurobond proceeds wired to them in the fiscal year ended June 2015.
The minister’s failure to explain the use of the Eurobond funds is compounded by the fact that Kenya is due to make its first interest payment on the Eurobond amounting to Sh9 billion this month, and taxpayers are scheduled to fork out Sh16.4 billion to settle part of the principal amount by the end of current fiscal year in June 2016.
The information memorandum that the government issued ahead of its going to the international debt market to raise the $2.75 billion says the bond was to finance general budgetary spending and infrastructure projects such as expansion of airports, sea ports, roads, pipelines, and geothermal plants.
But all public communication on the borrowing referred to infrastructure financing as the sole reason for seeking debt financing from the international markets.
The Treasury did not show the Kenyan public the Information Memorandum before it sought debt financing from international markets.
Kenya in June 2014 floated a $2 billion sovereign bond on the Irish bourse and later in December went back for an additional $750 million in what is technically known as a tap sale.Proceeds of the Eurobond were initially used to retire a costly $604.5 million syndicated loan Kenya had borrowed from commercial banks in 2012 to fund development projects.
A further $1.39 million went into settling the expenses relating to transaction, payment of advisory fees, bank charges and federal taxes.
This means that Kenya received $2.21 billion (Sh196.9 billion) as net proceeds of the Eurobond to finance mega public works.
The strange admission by the Treasury that it cannot identify projects financed by the sovereign note came in the middle of a heated public debate on the government’s spending of the Eurobond funds.source:http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Rotich--says-Treasury-has-no-list-of-Eurobond-projects/-/539546/3004196/-/gywrap/-/index.html
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