Azimio la Umoja’s presidential candidate Raila Odinga urged the government not to close the Keroche brewery.
Raila said in a speech on Friday that the company should be allowed to start operations and given time to repay its debt. “So we told them to let Keroche go, don’t kill Keroche,” he said. The former prime minister added: “If you can’t pay today, hand them over.
They have debts, they’re Kenyan, where are they going? If they can’t pay, help them keep their business going so they can Payments can be made tomorrow. That’s how we do business. Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Lifting a country out of poverty is achieved through private enterprise, and governments must create an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive.
“The private sector is the engine of global economic growth,” he said.
They do this by removing restrictive legal and bureaucratic barriers that the private sector can delay and create wealth. It is wrong to be taxed. People tend to avoid taxes when they are too high, but pay when they are too low and manageable. Raila was speaking at a meeting of Thika Greens with the Mount Kenya business community.
“Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,” Raila Odinga on the closure of Keroche Breweries.
“Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,” Raila Odinga on the closure of Keroche Breweries. pic.twitter.com/90rhEGHqg1
— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) June 17, 2022
On June 14, KRA again closed its factory due to new tax arrears. This is the sixth time in a year that KRA has closed the Naivasha-based company, Causing millions of dollars in damages. In March, KRA closed the brewery a few weeks later after 300 million tax arrears and offered fresh and strict terms and conditions.
According the company’s chief executive, Tabitha Ka Tabitha Karanja, the chief executive of the company, said the company’s efforts to find more time to pay off the arrears had run into difficulties.
“KRA’s draconian measures against Keroche Breweries constitute a hostile exception to well-established government policies of investment promotion, job creation, and support for value addition,” she said.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, the brewery was closed for two years because of the measures enforced to contain the spread of Covid-19 and we incurred tax arrears of Sh322m.”
Karanja attributed her woes to the move to join politics through the Ruto-affiliated party adding that it would not deter her from vying for the senatorial seat in Nakuru.
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