Uhuru: Debt, In A Cleaned-Up Government, Is An Enabler, Not A Burden

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 1- President Uhuru Kenyatta has defended the Jubilee administration’s appetite for borrowing, saying the question should be on how the money was spent and not why it was borrowed.

His critics say the government has left a big burden to the tax payers by a culture of borrowing, some saying the money was never used for the intended purpose.

But the President, in a blow-by-blow account, highlighted some of the major achievements during his tenure in leadership.

He was speaking during the 59^th Madaraka Day celebrations held at the Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi.

By borrowing, the President said Kenya was lessening the period it would take to achieve considerable development.

“To address the second limb, why borrow? We must look at how other nations prospered.  It took England 200 years to industrialize, the United States of America 160 years, and Japan 110 years.  But China took only 35 years and the four Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Republic of South Korea took 25 years to industrialize.  And that is why their accelerated growth was called the ‘Asian Miracle’,” the President said.

“The secret to these ‘miracles’ was acceleration.  They contracted their development timelines by implementing aggressive interventions and through policy choices that aided their acceleration.  In just one generation they were at par with the West.”

He added, “The afro-pessimist will tell you that Kenya cannot replicate this ‘miracle’.  But they are wrong. Our accelerated path to economic growth has begun and must be maintained by the incoming administration.”

In just 9 years, the President said Kenya had moved from being the 12th largest economy in Africa, to being the 6th largest economy and growing.

“We have almost tripled the wealth of our nation from a GDP of 4.5 trillion in 2013, to close to 13 Trillion currently,” he said.

As a mark of “this remarkable growth”, he said Kenya’s tax revenues have doubled from Sh800 Billion in FY 2012/13 to Sh1.662 Trillion as at April 2022.

“With the mandate you gave us, we are firmly on course to achieve the record shattering projection of Sh2 Trillion by the end of the Current Financial Year,” he said.

Further, he said Kenya’s road network has grown by almost 6 times, “our power generation 40 times, and connected more homes to electricity than any other country in Africa.  And if we have done this in just 9 years, the next administration can multiply our efforts to unprecedented heights. “

But to keep this acceleration, he said the Fifth Administration must fight corruption.

“One, it will not be possible to maintain the speed of our achievements in a contaminated environment.  And on this, allow me to go back to the corruption ‘clean-up’ we have made,” the president said.

“When we took over in 2013, some of the state corporations were “…rotten from the core and to the core”. We had to “…drain the swamp” from the inside-out. But we had to balance this ‘clean-up’ exercise with accelerated performance.  That is why we turned to the disciplined forces and summoned them to the course of nation building. “