By Tom Odhiambo It is probably right to say that every living person who has come into contact with modern commodities is hooked to one or the other of those goods. In fact modernity is very much premised on the availability and circulation of goods. It is the market that explains colonialism. Someone somewhere in London or Brussels or Berlin was looking for where to sell some industrial products as well as how to get more raw materials to continue making the goods. Eventually, when the Empire builders left, they bequeathed us the market, with all manners of branded commodities.…
Author: Editor
BY LANJI OUKO “Black doesn’t crack” is a commonly used phrase to describe how gracefully African women age. Take a look at Mama Ngina Kenyatta or the ever-glowing Nyiva Mwendwa. Since time immemorial, before anti-wrinkle creams and cosmetic surgery were introduced, women used natural products to nourish their skin. Centuries later, the cosmetic industry unexpectedly and gradually merged with the agricultural industry. Rice water, potato slices, avocado are some of the conventional natural products, however, the extreme skin care products include snail secretion, bird feces and bee venom. Women will go to great lengths in the name of beauty to…
As befits a population that has generally been shabbily ruled and a society that has seen more than its fair share of pointless grandstanding by the political class, Kenya’s public are a skeptical lot. We are difficult to convince and, even when convinced, even more difficult to please. And so it is to no one’s surprise that First Lady Margaret Kenyatta’s well-meaning “Beyond Zero” campaign has been met with a mixture of indifference and derision in many quarters, and sometimes with outright hostility. The post-independence history of Kenya is littered with the skeletons and carcasses of presidential public service initiatives…
BY LUKE MULUNDA On a hot Wednesday morning, a man hired an Uber taxi in Nairobi and requested the driver to take him to a destination outside Kenya’s capital. The customer then unwittingly led the driver to an isolated alley, where other men emerged. What happened next was not shocking to the driver: the men, who teamed up with the ‘customer’, set his car on fire after he narrowly escaped being lynched. This was the second attack of its kind in a matter of weeks. Late February, another Uber car was burned by unknown assailants with links to conventional taxi…
BY VICTOR ADAR Some of the worst fears for car lovers would be that moment when a mechanic paints your car but fails to get the original colour. Sometimes it could be as a result of wrong colour code, or just careless work. As always the case, you would be told to give the paint a few days to dry up only to see no change. A promise that buffing will be done to make it look cool will follow, but still you are unlikely to get a flawless finish. You realise that you have spent weeks instead of three…
Kenya’s local and foreign investors in real estate and property transactions may obtain legal advice on the eligibility of their investments to Capital Gains Tax (CGT) charge from advocates who are tax law practitioners, advocates’ firms, real estate and financial consultants, banks, investment and financial institutions with legal and tax departments. However, creation of public legal awareness on tax legislation, taxpayers’ rights and obligations is solely the duty of Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA). In this regard, KRA has set up a website which provides detailed, updated information on Real Estate and Landlords’ Legislation, court rulings, notices, news and publications, which…
BY ROWAN BENN Entrepreneurial business owners have discovered a new finance product, which has enabled them to make more cost effective capital investments. The benefit to their cash flow is having a deep ripple effect through their businesses. We talked to two businesses that represent a number of innovative managers who have cottoned on to the growing trend in specialist import finance. Tesia Supermarkets and Durogoods share their stories and reveal how they have found significant buying efficiencies by purchasing assets abroad with the support of NIC Bank and Chase Bank finance. Cash flow is king Cash flow is the…
BY JAMES MULIRO Sluggish economic activity and poor performance by companies are expected to dampen outlook in the banking industry with majority of players expected to report an increase in bad loans this year. This is according to a banking sector report released recently by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) last month. The ‘Credit Officer Survey’ covering the state of the banking industry in 2015 and giving a forecast of how 2016 is likely to turn out, indicates that the “perceived poor business environment” is likely to hurt the sector, with bad loans expected to remain way above the…
BY ANTONY MUTUNGA Africa has had a rising financial crisis that has caused the African governments to find other means of bringing in more investors and businesses to boost their economies. As a result, Africa has looked to Asia, for example China and Singapore that have prospered due to the development of economic zones. In 2006, china established the Going Global policy whereby one of its main objectives was to support the establishment of economic and trade cooperation zones abroad. With the information on how the economic zones were prosperous in Asia, the African states went on a mission to…
BY WESLEY KEN It’s on record. Upon winning, the ruling coalition led by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto said it was a blessing to Kenyans to have won the presidential election first round thus avoiding a run-off and saving the country over Sh6 billion that the electoral body could have spent to conduct a presidential run-off. That statement made economic sense. Three years later, financial prudence seems to have eluded them. Three parliamentary by- elections, two coming at very close intervals. This is a precipitation of the Jubilee Government through the appointment of three sitting members of…