This archive report was first published on 27 November 2019.
The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) taskforce, formed in March 2018 following a truce between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, has proposed a range of measures to promote economic growth and job creation in Kenya.
According to the BBI report, which was handed to President Kenyatta at State House on November 26, 2019, the team wants the country's tax base broadened without over-burdening taxpayers. The report also proposes that banks ring-fence funds for small businesses, export credit, manufacturing, housing, education, health, renewable energy, sanitation and waste management, and agriculture.
The task force, chaired by Garissa Senator Yusuf Haji, wants the Government to stop spending most of its money on salaries and wages, and instead pump additional funds into roads, dams and power stations, among other key investments.
The BBI team went around the country consulting citizens, leaders, institutions, civil society, the private and religious sectors, and other stakeholders on thorny issues facing the country. The views that they collected as well as proposed solutions to long-standing national problems were shared in the report.
“It is not enough to merely improve our economic output and present rates of investment. We must entirely transform the way our economy operates if we are to deal with the present lack of jobs,” reads part of the abridged report.
Central Bank Governor Patrick Njoroge has blamed Kenya's skewed growth on the country's reliance on public expenditure rather than the private sector. “It is true you have GDP numbers but you cannot eat GDP,” he said recently.
