KRA faces the task of picking a boss

This week is a crucial one for the Kenya Revenue Authority as it begins the search for its new head.

The battle to get a new director general, which pits insiders against outsiders, is key to KRA as it gives the taxman a chance to pick a candidate who will drive the agency through one of its most trying times.

With shrinking revenue collection, a raft of inefficiencies and the need to rise to the occasion in a new role under the EAC regional integration, KRA is being squeezed from all sides.

Barclays Bank of Kenya’s chief executive Adan Mohammed is one of the seven short listed candidates as the tax authority looks to fill the vacancy when Michael Waweru’s term of office as Commissioner General expires in March 2012.

The banker — who gets to the interview panel with an impressive Curriculum Vitae as the head of Barclays businesses in the East and West Africa countries — is fighting it out with two current senior executives at KRA. The Commissioner of Domestic Taxes and Large Taxpayers Office John Njiraini and Customs Services Commissioner Wambui Namu are also to be interviewed for the job beginning Monday.

The recruiters are facing a dicey dilemma on whether to pick an insider or outsider.

The top KRA job has also attracted James Wahome, Helen Bila, Commissioner, Alice Achieng’ Owuor and James Njuguna.

The candidate who gets the job faces a daunting task as they will have to do away with the inefficiency hurting revenue collection.

Kenya, economists said, needed to up its revenue collection to raise enough funds to finance growing expenditure needs as the country gets into a new devolved system after the general election.

The government is also facing new expenditure needs with the Somali war and it has to raise at least KSh9 billion ($106 million) to finance the general election later in the year.

Kenya’s tax revenues for first quarter of the current financial year rose 15 per cent to Ksh161 billion ($1.57 billion) compared with the same period a year ago although the taxman warned that harsh economic conditions in the form of high inflation could hurt revenues.

“The slowing economic growth and unfavourable macroeconomic environment adversely affected revenue collection during the first quarter” KRA said in October last year.

This fiscal year which ends in June, KRA plans to collect KSh734 billion ($8.6 billion).

Frequent breakdowns of the KRA online clearing systems at the port of Mombasa have been blamed for the ongoing delays at the regional facility which has nearly doubled the period it takes for goods to get to Nairobi.