Economic numbers can look scary and sound positively terminal when not probably understood. Trillion-shilling debt here. Hundred-billion shillings deficit there. Big, scary, numbers everywhere. They get even more scary when some respected economists dishonestly use them and put a spin to give the impression that the country is in a very precarious position and is perhaps on the verge of bankruptcy. It borders on intellectual dishonesty and is unfair to the public when for example people who should know better claim that Kenya rescheduled a $600m bank loan for another three months because it was 'broke'.
This despite the fact the country has more than 10 times that amount in reserves that it could use to pay off that loan if it wanted to. Was some of the proceeds of the proposed Eurobond not supposed to retire these bank loans? So how does a timing issue and a simple debt management strategy make one conclude that the country is broke? There has been a lot of negative remarks on the state of our national debt. Is debt about to kill us as recent newspaper headlines and comments from some of our economists would want us to believe? What is our national debt situation like? Do the facts and figures support the views of those claiming we are choking with debt? Let us examine the same.
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