Reality check for Githae: Kenyans cannot live on edible rats alone

The man in charge of Kenya’s national “granary” is famous for his simple but radical solutions to the country’s perennial hunger.

Mr Robinson Njeru Githae, the minister for Finance, believes Kenyans should diversify their diet and stop dependence on maize.

“For example in Tanzania, they eat rats. But in this country, if you tell people to eat rats, they will not eat.

Therefore, people will die of hunger and there are rats here,” he said at an earlier event.

Taxation policies

On Thursday, Mr Githae was in a different kind of spotlight when he read the Budget statement — a report of the spending and taxation policies for the next 12 months.

These are hard times for the country and the minister. He buried his son less than a month ago.

He is mourning his two colleagues, Prof George Saitoti and Mr Orwa Ojodeh, whose burials are coming up tomorrow and Sunday.

The country’s economy is also in rough waters. The shilling is shaky and exposed to depreciation. Teachers, civil servants and doctors want more money.

There is a maize disease, that the minister has labelled “mysterious”, and which is destroying maize in the Rift Valley — Kenya’s grain basket.

Besides, there is a big election on the horizon and the electoral commission wants more money to conduct it. Yet the taxman can only collect so much.

How will the lawyer get himself out of the tight corner?

He may be forced to borrow, but then, he has been on a borrowing spree from bilateral donors.

Japan has given him Sh31 billion for roads, and France has promised him Sh8 billion for energy.

Filling the Budget gap through domestic borrowing is not attractive, and this is why the government was forced to go for a Sh50 billion loan from multilateral donors to plug the gap in the current financial year.

Mr Githae’s five short months at the Treasury reveal a man who manages by crisis, and cuts deals whenever push comes to shove.

He unlocked the stalemate in Parliament over the Finance Bill, 2011, when he gave in to amendments to the Bill that saw MPs get Sh868 million in gratuity payments at the end of their term.

But with that, he made sure that prevailing extortionist interest rates were not capped through the law. It was a compromise he struck with MPs.

The minister also failed to allocate money to the free learning programme in primary and secondary schools, saying that the bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education had failed to submit a schedule of payments.

But with the threat of a teachers’ strike and the mass closure of schools, the minister promised to “somehow get money from somewhere”. He did so and gave it to the schools.

Mr Githae is also the one who has to release Sh3.3 billion to retired teachers as ordered by the courts.

He sees no problem with that, but then, his powers are not absolute and therefore he has to work with the Controller of Budget to get the retirees paid before the end of the financial year.

And with a “mysterious disease” devastating maize in the Rift Valley bread basket, Mr Githae may have to reiterate his “eat rats” advice or be forced to fork out more money for imports.

Mr Githae, 57, has been more open than all his predecessors at the Treasury in the Kibaki administration.

He is on Facebook. His real phone number is all over the Internet. He picks his calls. He personally answers queries put to him promptly. And he has the ear of Parliament’s Budget Committee.

It is a major improvement from his lacklustre tenure at Nairobi Metropolitan Development when the ministry was rated among the worst-performing in March this year.

The MP for Ndia is a lawyer who has also worked for two commercial banks and managed an insurance firm.

He was first elected to Parliament in 2002. He has previously served as assistant minister in the ministries of Transport and Local Government.

Mr Githae joined the Cabinet in 2009 as Minister for Nairobi Metropolitan Development from where he was plucked and thrown to the Treasury in January this year.

He wants to be the governor of Kirinyaga County after the next elections.

But first, he must fix the country’s economy.