DP Ruto, Mudavadi meet Kepsa leadership

The Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) has presented its economic manifesto on improving the ease of doing business to Deputy President William Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza alliance.

In the document presented by CEO Caroline Kariuki, the lobby identified five key pillars: job creation, social transformation, governance and economic prosperity, cutting-edge innovation and global competitiveness.

“We are looking for ways of building a robust economy to create jobs in the private sector. The private sector plays a big role in the creation of jobs and we have outlined five key pillars that we want the government to address. We hope (DP Ruto) will listen to our concerns and outline a plan on achieving them.” Ms Kariuki said.

Bidco chairman Vimal Shah also urged leaders to commit to maintain peace during and after the elections.

“As the private sector, we have launched our campaign ‘Mkenya Daima’ so that we can preach peace. It is the responsibility of every Kenyan to maintain peace regardless of their political persuasion.”

DP Ruto outlined his plans, including reducing borrowing from external sources by increasing savings and increasing investment in the agricultural sector.

“Our country has the potential of borrowing internally if we have a robust borrowing system. I have gone to some other countries such as Uganda that has a good social security system where the government and the employer contribute to the social security fund. We want to introduce reforms to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) to take care of all these.”

He also promised to make sure government institutions such as the Judiciary, the Kenya Revenue Authority and investigative agencies are more independent. The lack of financial independence for this institutions, he said, has made them prone to “state capture”.

“We know that the Judiciary heavily relies on the government for funds to run its operations. Our institutions such as the DCI have been weaponised to fight people who are against the government. All we need to do is to establish a fund for the criminal justice system for their independence.”

Amani National Congress party leader Musalia Mudavadi, one of the principals in the Kenya Kwanza coalition that includes Dr Ruto, drummed up support for what they call the bottom-up economic model, saying it is about creating an inclusive economy.

“The bottom-up economic model is not about those at the bottom of the pyramid against those at the top. It is all about improving the economy by being inclusive and increasing investment in the small and medium enterprises,” Mr Mudavadi said.