Ruto makes his first parliamentary address promising new changes to better the lives of Kenyans

NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenyan fifth President Dr. William Ruto on Thursday afternoon addressed the joint parliamentary sitting where he said his administration is focusing on transforming Kenya’s economy.

The head of state made a political attack on former president Uhuru Kenyatta referring to him as the current leader of the opposition in Kenya.

President William Ruto has yet again taken a swipe at former President Uhuru Kenyatta saying he is the current leader of the opposition.

“We all know that in the build-up to the just concluded elections, Kenya became the first country in the world where a sitting deputy President turned to be the leader of the opposition and the leader of the opposition became the candidate of government and as things would be, the opposition candidate won the election and became president and the president became the leader of the opposition party," Ruto said.

The president assured Kenyans that his administration will be all-inclusive despite their political stand.

He went on to say that it’s time for drastic changes within the country’s financial management government to stem runaway debt.

Among the key changes was his executive order to the National Treasury to cut KSH 300 billion from the 202-2023 budget to relieve Kenya’s spending and borrowing pressures.

The head of state added that the reduction of spending is pegged on reducing the government’s borrowing needs from an estimated KSH 900 billion in the fiscal year to close the financing hole.

Ruto told senators and Members of Parliament that “To this end, I have instructed Treasury to work with Ministries to find at least Ksh.300 billion in this year’s budget so that we can remove it because the market cannot sustain the kind of borrowing we are doing as a government. We should never borrow to finance recurrent expenditures. It is not right and not sustainable. It is simply wrong. We must bring ourselves and our country to sanity,” President Ruto told MPs and Senators.

Data from the National Treasury stipulates that the spending across the 2022-2023 financial year has been estimated at KSH 3.4 trillion against a revenue projection of KSH 2.5 trillion.

This is to leave a deficit of KSH 863 billion to be plugged through KSH281 billion in the next foreign financing and KSH 582bi billion in net domestic financing.

The KSH 2.3 trillion of the KSH 3.4 trillion budget is estimated to be a recurrent expenditure that includes spending by ministries apart from capital allocations.

Economists have argued that without a proposed budget cut, Kenya’s public debt is expected to rise from KSH 8.6 trillion at the end of June this year to KSH 9.4 trillion by June of 2023 leaving a sum of just under KSH 600 billion to the KSH 10 trillion debt ceiling.

In order to address the high rising national debt, the president has proposed to the Senators and Members of Parliament the need to review the revenue mobilization mechanism used by the taxman - the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

President Ruto “The tax burden must reflect an ability to pay. Those at the bottom of the pyramid should pay what is proportional. We will be proposing tax measures that begin to move us towards the right direction."

GAROWE ONLINE