Outspoken political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi has taken a swipe at Kenyans questioning the government’s increasing appetite for foreign loans.
In a set of controversial tweets published on Wednesday afternoon, the formerly closeted Uhuru Kenyatta-sycophant claimed that Kenyans’ habit of borrowing among themselves denies them the moral authority to lecture the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
According to Mutahi, statistics show by Christmas this year, Kenyans will have borrowed twice what the IMF loaned Uhuru from Fuliza alone, with Saccos, shylocks, MFI’s and “Chamas” excluded.
“Kenyans are loan maniacs. They Fuliza 1.2 billion a day or half a trillion per year. Between January and June, they will borrow 262 billion, or what IMF is loaning Uhuru (Ksh 261 b). If so, what moral authority do they have to lecture him or IMF? They should just sit on a pin.
By Christmas, Kenyans will have borrowed twice what IMF is loaning us. And they will have borrowed it from only one source: Fuliza. If you add Saccos, shylocks, MFIs, and Chamas (forget banks) they will have borrowed trillions. Are they stupid? No. They know that borrowing is good,” he wrote.
Mutahi’s comments come a day after over 150,000 enraged Kenyans have so far signed a petition through change.org in a bid to stop International Monetary Fund (IMF) from releasing its Sh257 billion loan to Kenya.
The accumulation of debt, including from international capital markets (Eurobond), has seen Kenya commit more than half of taxes to pay loans in recent years.
Further, the cost of servicing public debt has gone up in tandem with the ever-growing budget deficit, which has made it necessary for the government to increase its borrowing every year.
The government has defended increased borrowing, arguing debt has helped build new roads, a modern railway, bridges and electricity plants and transmission lines but in the real sense, many of these projects are either ghosts, incomplete or pure White Elephants like the Standard Gauge Railway which has still never made any profits since its inception.
