President Ruto: We have stabilised the economy
President William Ruto and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua on Wednesday met Field-Marshal Muthoni wa Kirima and Miriam Muthoni, widow of freedom hero General Stanley Mathenge.
President William Ruto has said his administration has stabilised the economy one year after the August 9 general election.
Dr Ruto said the first order of business by his new administration last year was to plug a Sh300 billion hole in the 2022/23 budget.
“We now have a firm foundation and I want to announce that we have stabilised the economy. We are going to be prudent in the management of our resources,” Dr Ruto told leaders and residents during a meeting held at Sagana State Lodge in Nyeri on Tuesday.
“Our first assignment when we took over power was to deal with the Sh300 billion hole in the budget. In our new budget (2023/24), we have reduced borrowing by up to Sh500 billion. One cannot improve the economy by taking loans unnecessarily,” the head of state said.
Last year, President Ruto asked all ministries to cut spending totalling Sh300 billion as a way of managing the debt burden.
Dr Ruto made the pronouncement on Thursday, September 29 during his address to the joint parliamentary sitting of the Senate and the National Assembly.
He said the order would review the budget downwards from Sh3.31 trillion to Sh3.01 trillion.
Still feeling the pressure
However, Kenyans are still feeling the pressure of the rising cost of living with the prices of food and fuel remaining high. Kenyans are also grappling with a weakening shilling that has hit Sh150 to the dollar.
On Tuesday, he emphasised the need for all Kenyans to pay taxes.
"We should pay taxes to achieve self-sufficiency. We are on the right track and we will succeed as a nation," he added.
Dr Ruto said his government was negotiating a preferential trade agreement with the United States of America (USA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to find markets for the country's locally manufactured products.
"Our goal is to increase the manufacturing sector's share of gross domestic product (GDP) from the current 7 per cent to 15 per cent in the next five years. By 2030, we want to reach 20 per cent of GDP. We also want to increase our exports as a percentage of GDP from 10 per cent to 30 per cent. These two paradigms are driving our economic conversation," he said.
Protecting farmers
The Head of State reiterated his government's commitment to eliminating cartels in the agricultural sector and protecting farmers from poor earnings.
"In our Kenya Kwanza Plan, we want to eradicate cartels in the agricultural sector and revamp the entire mechanism. We need to clean up the agriculture sector and I must tell you that we will not continue like this," said Dr Ruto.
He stressed the need to focus on value addition to all the tea produced in the country and entrench more reforms in the sector.
"Currently, we are only doing five per cent value addition on all the tea we produce. In five years, we want to do a 50 per cent value addition of all our tea here in Kenya so that we can improve the income of our farmers," said the President.
"We are going to review the Tea Act so that we sort out the whole ecosystem. The tea sector earns the country Sh120 billion a year. We want to improve it to Sh150 billion so that we can ensure that farmers get more money," he added.
