The budget policy statement for 2021 -2022 shows that the country will spend 3.02 trillion shillings in the next financial year, which is expected to address priority government spending areas and stimulate economic development. This should proceed with care being exercised to ensure that the government address wealth formation, job creation and attendant capabilities, which will pull many from the quagmire of poverty.
This should be done through ensuring efficiency of governments and markets and enabling them to shape the development agenda and complementing individual goals. Living conditions should be improved through increased financing of slums and informal settlements developments and putting in place climate change mitigation plans to enable citizens cope with droughts, diseases and disasters.
Budgets should be able to advance penetration of technology and leverage it to solve some of the problems facing Kenya, including youth employment. But with such a huge budget, sceptics have already started doubting our ability to finance it, because it shows a deficit of Kenya shillings one trillion to be funded through borrowing.
I propose three approaches for adequate development financing, the first one being the development of sustainable Domestic Resource Mobilization strategies by incentivizing Kenyans to save more and diaspora remittances, thereby availing funds for financing major national projects. Egyptians for example used this strategy to finance their second phase of Suez Canal in the 1970’s.
Secondly, the country must build more consensus on the application of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), which have proven vital in accelerating the development program of many countries. PPPs have been accepted across the world for offering innovation, capital, technology, efficiency and effectiveness, which have bearing on the cost and superiority of public goods and services. Efforts must be made to obtain stakeholder buy in, including by local banks and developers because of the relationship between PPPs and attainment of Vision 2030, the big four Agenda and the bigger AU agenda 2063, all of which heavily rely on the enhanced participation of the private sector in the development process.
Thirdly, we must entrench Value for money (VfM) aspects for public projects, which promotes a sense of ownership for them, and makes citizens champions for their monitoring and evaluation, which guarantees timely and quality completion & within cost.
Dr. Daniel Mutegi Giti 