2015 has been a successful year for Kenya, says DP

The country is headed in the right direction and 2016 will be a good year for Kenya, Deputy President William Ruto has said.

In a response to critics who contend that the government has lost its way and that it was mishandling major national challenges, Mr Ruto said Kenyans had little to worry about.

He spelt out a string of achievements pointing to improvements in the investment climate, the health and security sectors, infrastructure upgrades and high profile visits by world leaders saying they demonstrated that the country was moving in the right direction.

“2015 was a good year for Kenya in many ways. It was a period of progress, stability and growth in which we advanced our common prosperity through programmes and projects across a variety of sectors. We made investments and improvements that will preserve our present endowment and buttress new wealth creation,” said the DP through spokesman David Mugonyi.

He said implementation of the Jubilee manifesto and the Vision 2030 masterplan were guiding the actions of government.

“As a government the true measure of any period is the state of the economy. In 2015 the economy grew at about 5.4 per cent making Kenya Africa’s 9th largest economy. With falling interest rates and contained inflation Kenyans were cushioned from runaway commodity prices and provided with affordable access to loans for both businesses and individuals,” said Mr Ruto.

The DP said the ranking of Kenya by American news service Bloomberg as the world’s third fastest growing economy behind China and Philippines indicated the world was noticing the country’s promise. The list ranked 57 of the world’s fastest growing economies.

He noted Ernst and Young in its investment attractiveness survey across Sub Saharan Africa, Kenya ranked third. He said in a year-ender statement that Jubilee had seen the cost of power go down by 25 per cent as of February this year.

In addition, he said, Kenya is now the world’s eighth largest producer of geothermal power and the country is on course to add a million new customers to the electric grid this year.  

“The energy sector is one of the areas into which we have invested heavily and the energy situation probably has a bit to do with this increased attractiveness. From the beginning of our stewardship of this country the Government set and has continuously chased ambitious goals for the energy sector. We have consistently scaled up the capacity of the national grid. We have added 514.9 megawatts to the national grid to deliver a total capacity of 2,125 MW representing a 31 per cent increase,” said Mr Ruto.

Mr Ruto also flagged the connection of 99 per cent of public primary schools to the electric grid as a major Jubilee achievement.

Only 800 out of 21,500 public primary schools are yet to receive an electricity connection, according to Mr Ruto. 

The DP also said that the government this year scrapped examination fees and capped fees for secondary schools to ensure that no child is locked out from national examinations. 

“Additionally, we continued to raise the digital preparedness of our schools by training over 2,500 teachers in ICT and transferring over Sh1.2 billion to schools for the construction of ICT hardware storage rooms,” he said.

One of the Jubilee government’s signature projects, the Standard Gauge Railway was also flagged with Mr Ruto saying that 60 per cent of the civil works were complete and over half of the 609km track has been excavated. 

“This project will reduce transport costs by 60pc and decongest our roads,” he said.

He said that in Mombasa the expansion of the port was paying dividends with up to 75 per cent reduction in freight time. 

“With regard to the road network we added 494kms of new roads, rehabilitated 193 kilometres and carried out routine maintenance on 68,000 additional kilometres across the country” he added. 

“In 2015 we doubled the presence and impact of the revolutionary Huduma Kenya program across the country. At the beginning of the year only 23 counties enjoyed 35 government services under one roof but as I write now we have added 23 additional centres across the country but we are not yet done,” he said.

In the health sector Mr Ruto said the first public health insurance programme since independence happened in 2015 with the coming into effect of the new National Health Insurance Fund rates catering for both in and outpatient treatment.

He added government invested Sh38 billion to roll out managed equipment services in partnership with county governments that will bring the latest medical technology to counties. 

On land, he said government intervened to end what he described as the sector’s “notoriety of inefficiency”.

“We completed the reorganisation of both Nairobi and Mombasa land registries and even more importantly completed the digitisation of 14 land registries,” he said.

The DP said the government’s programmes were putting money into the pockets of the youth, women and people with disability by issuing tenders worth Sh30 billion to this group.   

He said there was significant improvement in security after the government provided the police with 2,400 vehicles completing the biggest addition to the police fleet since independence. 

“In May, we made a massive strategic step by launching the National Surveillance and Control System in partnership with Safaricom. This Sh15 billion project drastically improves the connectivity of our security forces, which in turn makes their operations a lot more effective and the homeland safer,” he said.  He said security forces acting together have foiled multiple terrorism plots.

Mr Ruto said the highlight of the year was the hosting of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit graced by US President Barack Obama and visits by Pope Francis, Italian PM Mateo Renzi, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and the hosting of the WTO Ministerial Conference.