Ruto: How my budget will deal with high cost of living, unemployment

Speaking in Kajiado, Ruto carefully combed through the different avenues he intends to utilize the budgetary allocations to alleviate Kenyans from the tough economic crisis they are grappling with and also provide job opportunities.

According to the Head of State, the government bears a "deliberate and practical" plan to realize its vision starting with the elephant in the room, the high cost of living.

President Ruto stated that he plans to maximize the untapped avenues of bolstering agriculture which consequently will aid in increasing production and lower the cost of food commodities.

"We have registered 5 million farmers and we have given each fertilizer, we also have put money in the budget to ensure that we increase fertilizers and seeds to our farmers in the coming year," he said.

"We will build 400 small markets in different parts to help our farmers, so that we start the journey of aggregating, value addition, processing and manufacturing to bring money into the farmer's pockets and also create employment for our youth."

To also aid the growth of livestock farming, and food production, Ruto noted that the government will construct about 4,100 dams to tame water shortage. 

"For the first time we have the largest budget in matters of livestock. We lose a lot of livestock because of drought and we have a big plan of constructing dams," he said.

"We will build 100 big dams and we already have contracts for 33 dams. We will also build 1000 small dams and 3000 water pans."

At the same time, President Ruto said he will channel his resources towards contriving the soaring unemployment rates.

He said bilateral talks are ongoing with foreign nations to agree on labour agreements for Kenyans working in all professions including university graduates.

This, he said, will be spearheaded by the State Department of Diaspora Affairs which is mandated with channelling employment avenues to Kenyans in foreign nations.

"We are in talks with Germany, USA, Canada, UAE region and they have asked us to give them young people who will go and work there," he said. 

"We are planning bilateral labour agreements. We want to agree on how much our young people will be paid when they arrive there we don't want them to suffer."

Other avenues the President said he seeks to create employment are in increasing manufacturing of raw materials, and also onboard as many Kenyans as possible to his ambitious housing plan which has caused a rift among Kenyans.

To also assuage the dire state of education in the nation, President Ruto stated that he has allocated an increased amount of money from the previous years to the construction of schools and employment of teachers nationwide.

He added that with the added amount, he aims to improve the quality of education in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) centres, universities and other institutions of higher learning.

"In this budget, I have added an extra Ksh.65 billion for education beyond what we have been spending. We have dedicated Ksh.650 billion to the education of our young people from primary school to University level. And that is why we have planned a lot of money for it," he said.

"I have included money to employ 25,000 teachers and next year I will employ more because we have a deficit of teachers of up to 110,000. We must close the gap."

The Ksh.4.5 trillion budget awarded the lion's share to the Ministry of Education, which received an allocation of Ksh.628 billion for the 2023/2024 Financial Year.

The State Department for Medical Services and Public Health received Ksh.141 billion, while the allocation to the Higher Education Loan’s Board (HELB) doubled from Ksh.15 billion to Ksh.30 billion.

The government also allocated Ksh.81.9 billion to Equity, Poverty Reduction, Women and Youth Empowerment Programs to support entrepreneurial endeavors.

It further gave Ksh.338 billion to support operations in Defence, National Police, National Intelligence Service and Prisons for the financial year.