Lobby seeks 7-year tax holiday for youth businesses

Lobby group Women in Business (WIB) has called on leaders spearheading the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) to consider allowing the youth-owned ventures at least a seven-year tax holiday as an incentive for entrepreneurship.

Chief executive Mary Muthoni has said the incentive would spur the growth of youth-owned small businesses.

“Youth and women are very crucial in the development of our economy and a tax holiday would play a big role in encouraging a big number of the youth and women engage in business,” she said.

“The government and Kenyans should use the BBI to deepen social integration and invest in economic opportunities for improving their wealth and livelihoods.”

Ms Muthoni also called on the BBI initiative to consider “biashara mashinani”(business in grassroots) policies and incentives for village-based enterprises that would spearhead the growth of business at the grassroots.

“The policies that will be centred towards promoting small-medium enterprises will be beneficial to youth and women in the society,” she said on the sidelines of a forum to review the BBI report.

Other than highlighting policies to remodel the political environment, the report also sets strategies to ensure financial inclusivity, investments and ensuring equity in economic participation.

The participants urged Kenyans to seize the moment and robustly engage one another on the ideas in the document and those not in it with to determine lasting solutions to their intractable problems.

“Let everyone read this document, don’t rely on only what the politicians will say.

“This document is for all the Kenyans, especially women [who] should be encouraged to read and make wise decisions to uplift their living standards,” Wiper Party Senator Judith Sijeny said.

“If we leave the next steps to politicians, they will continue with their beaten path of schemes and counter-schemes and looking at the process both from a political dividend and trap standpoint, which is their principal preoccupation.”