KENYAN Deputy President William Ruto, the front-runner to become the nation’s next leader, will scale back spending on mega roads, rail and energy projects, rein in debt and pump more money into small business if he wins this year’s election.
The 55-year-old former cabinet minister plans to implement a so-called Bottom-Up model, with the creation of a 200-billion-shilling ($1.8-billion) fund for small businesses to expand their production in industries ranging from housing and food-processing to manufacturing.
It would be financed by diverting resources within the budget — estimated by the National Treasury to be about 3.3-trillion shillings in 2022-23 — from major infrastructure projects, Ruto said in an interview.
The plan “will give us an opportunity to reorganize our investments, reorganize our priorities,” he said in Washington on March 5.
The program, if implemented, would mark a departure from the current administration’s approach to expanding East Africa’s biggest economy. President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration has invested-billions of dollars in projects including a railway linking the port city of Mombasa, the
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