Treasury Cabinet Secretary Prof. Njuguna Ndung'u on Wednesday, January 11 warned Kenyans to brace themselves for tough economic times in 2023.
The CS revealed that the country’s financial levels were rising to unimaginable levels.
Njuguna spoke during the public hearing of the budget-making process that brought together stakeholders from different sectors including representatives from the Executive and the Legislature in Nairobi.
“From all the things we have analyzed, the outlook of 2023 is not looking very good, there are clear signals that it is going to be a tough year,” Njuguna opined.
Njuguna's remarks came at a time when Kenyans are facing tough economic times with energy and food costs soaring amid high inflation.
In the last two years, the economy has been hit hard by the lingering effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, events that devastated global markets as seen in skyrocketing oil and food prices.
“Multiple factors are likely to come into play and affect the growth prospects across the globe,
For instance, if the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to escalate, the global supply chains will continue to be affected, thereby causing supply disruptions and a surge in inflation...” Njuguna added.
The Treasury CS further revealed that the supply disruptions and high levels of inequalities and poverty were factors that would continue to hit hard on Kenyans.
"We have witnessed here in Kenya that food security and climate change have produced severe crises compounded by these supply disruptions, inequality, poverty and social conflicts,” he remarked.
Treasury also lamented the wastage of resources by various government departments and called on strict austerity measures to manage the public coffers.
“We don't want you to start new projects before you start new ones.
We don't want wastage of resources, we have idle equipment on site, there are on loans we must look into this,” Treasury PS Chris Kiptoo directed.
A report released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) in December 2022, indicated that the inflation against the consumer price index dropped from 9.4 in November to 9.1 in December.
Inflation in December was driven by the increase in prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages, transport, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, KNBS stated.
