CS Mbadi says timelines to Singapore dream dependent on Kenyans’ commitment

National Treasury and Economic Planning Cabinet Secretary (CS) John Mbadi now says the time taken to achieve Kenya’s ambitious first world status plan is dependent on the collective commitment by Kenyans.

Addressing the media on Thursday, CS Mbadi expressed optimism that the 10-year target spearheaded by President William Ruto is achievable, adding that the government is targeting to raise over Ksh.600 billion from privatization and divesture of public assets.

“The time for us to achieve this time-frame, is about our commitment as a country. Let us believe in ourselves. When we want to do things differently you want to remain at the same place,” he noted.

This comes as the timelines announced by president william ruto have been a moving target, starting with a 30-year goal, 10 years and recently halfway next year.

Mbadi insisted that the vision will come to fruition and President Ruto has is committed to achieve the goal only with an assured support from the netizens.

The Treasury CS then turned to the opposition brigade who have labelled the plan a mirage, picking out
Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro who he says is only bitter after his removal from the powerful budget and appropriations committee.

“What we must demonstrate now is to believe in the government first, I don’t know why believability has gone down. Somenone asked us where we have taken the money, we borrowed in the past 3 years…it is just a year since he left office as the chair of bugdet can he explain where he took the money? He was doing cabros in his home,” Mbadi noted.

He added that the National Infrastructure Fund (NIF) and the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), set to be the financial wagons for the project, will be funded by the ongoing privatization of public assets even as he defended the ongoing privatization of Safaricom and the Kenya pipeline corporation.

“This NIF will get initial funding from privatization and divestiture. We are targeting about Ksh.600 billion already we have identified Ksh.350 billion from KPC and Safaricom which will give us about 350-320 billion,” he noted.

The Ministry also clarified that the control of the funds will remain with the government as NIF will be overseen by a competitively appointed Board and CEO, while the SWF will operate under a "robust policy framework" to ensure prudent investment, fiscal discipline and inter-generational equity.