Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria on Friday, October 25 launched a scathing attack on the Treasury CS Ukur Yattani, over the ballooning public debt, after MP’s on Wednesday, October 9, voted to raise the country’s debt limit.
He went on to claim that the accounts books in the crucial ministry were not adding up, as it was discovered that the country was servicing too many loans.
The legislator also stated that some of those loans were charged abnormally high interest rates.
According to Kuria, Kenya was misled into taking commercial loans which were more expensive and less restrictive, instead of cheap credit from multilateral organisations because they were tied down with many conditions.
“How can you have one loan paying nine per cent and another 70.7 per cent, even you as an individual, it shows that some things that have been happening in Treasury have been ‘
Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria on Friday, October 25 launched a scathing attack on the Treasury CS Ukur Yattani, over the ballooning public debt, after MP’s on Wednesday, October 9, voted to raise the country’s debt limit.
He went on to claim that the accounts books in the crucial ministry were not adding up, as it was discovered that the country was servicing too many loans.
The legislator also stated that some of those loans were charged abnormally high interest rates.
According to Kuria, Kenya was misled into taking commercial loans which were more expensive and less restrictive, instead of cheap credit from multilateral organisations because they were tied down with many conditions.
“How can you have one loan paying nine per cent and another 70.7 per cent, even you as an individual, it shows that some things that have been happening in Treasury have been suspicious and leave a lot to be desired.
“You find institutions like World Bank, Kuwait Fund and Africa Development Bank pleading with countries to take their loans, whose interest rate was 1 per cent or 2 per cent maximum. But someone leaves that money and takes a loan that we pay 9 per cent,” Kuria told reporters.
He further claimed that the Parliamentary Budget Committee and Treasury had made a resolve to bring down the debt to 100 per cent constitutionality in order to reduce the issue of high-interest rates.
The legislator suggested that the country would be better placed to ” mix that (reduce high-interest loans) with the other issue of balanced budgeting and zero-based budgeting, where we ask ourselves whether an expenditure is necessary, and finally mopping up all the money that is sitting idle in all the ministries and parastatals.”
