Rotich: Government never gets broke

Treasury CS Henry Rotich has denied media reports that the government is broke saying the reporting was “fake.”

Mr. Rotich, while reacting to media reports about his statement on Wednesday before the Senate Finance Committee that Kenya is experiencing a shortfall of revenue to the tune on Ksh.84 billion.

“Tell me of a government that has ever gone broke?” he dared the media forgetting of countries like Greece which was declared bankrupt in 2015.

Trying to reassure Kenyans, the CS said that the government is the safest place to do business with.

“The story was just that revenues have fallen behind, it was a sensational story, I have just come out of Eurobond with Ksh.200 billion,” said Mr. Rotich.

“In situations where revenues go down, we smoothen this by borrowing.”

The kerfuffle started after the minister was at pains to explain why there were delays in disbursement of funds to the county governments and instead promising that funds would be released by June.

“We are running short of revenue. There was a slow down in business activities because of elections but we are now catching up,” said Rotich.

The CS however noted that Treasury had already disbursed Ksh.134 billion to counties, an amount he said represented 43% of the monies supposed to be disbursed.