Oral East AfricaKisumu County boss Anyang Nyong’o has pleaded with government to deliver on the Kes2.5 billion Kabonyo Kanyagwal Fish project at a time the state has been cutting down on development spending.
In the current financial year, development projects have been awarded a paltry 11 percent of the Kes4.28 trillion budget as debts eat up half of the entire cake.
In practice, the situation looks worse with the government behind its own expenditure targets on development having spent only Kes207.5 billion for the nine months, less than half of the Sh457.2 billion budgeted for projects for the full year.
Impact of white elephants
It is no wonder the county chose to priorities the impact of state cut backs during the Kisumu Governor meeting with Interior Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo in Kisumu.
Governor Nyong'o also questioned the delayed completion of the Mamboleo-Kakamega road as well as Chemelil-Muhoroni- road.
Cutting spending on roads, schools, hospitals and other critical infrastructure hurts the country’s growth prospects by dimming job prospects, and denying the economy access to new area of potential growth.
The Kabonyo Kanyagwal Fisheries and Aquaculture Research and Training Centre project for instance, was supposed to produce seven million fingerlings annually.
Nile Perch Multiplication Centre, Aquaculture Resource Centre and Kenya Fisheries Training School would facilitate training, research, innovation and promote best practices in fisheries and aquaculture through field demonstrations and incubations.
Project site roads leading to the project site were also set to be upgraded to bitumen standards further opening up the Kabonyo-Kanyagwal area.
“I want to earnestly appeal to the National government not to abandon this viable project which is set to create more wealth and employment opportunities for our people,” said Nyong’o.
Promissory note
Interior PS Omollo reassured Kisumu the President was on a ‘transformational journey’ to deliver on his Bottom up Economic model and food and nutrition was part of this ‘journey’.
Treasury data on the other hand shows, debt service costs have now overtaken its combined spending on recurrent and development projects. Treasury shows that in the nine months between July 2023 and March, the government used Sh1.24 trillion to service debt compared to Sh1.11 trillion spent on salaries and development.
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