President William Ruto on Friday, July 5 banned all state officers and public servants from participating in public contributions/Harambees.

Making a raft of austerity measures across various agencies of the government, President Ruto further directed the Attorney General to prepare and submit legislation to this effect.

The AG has further been tasked with developing a mechanism for structured and transparent contributions for public, charitable, and philanthropic purposes.

The head of state also suspended the purchase of motor vehicles by the government for 12 months, except for security agencies.

He says that a new policy on transport for public officers will be developed within this period.

All these measures, he says, are the consequence of withdrawing the Finance Bill, which meant a reduction of the country’s revenue targets by KSh346 billion.

Treasury was, over the last few days, tasked with assessing the adverse impact of
either reducing the budget by the entire KSh346 billion or borrowing the full amount.

This was a tough balancing act between cutting the entire amount which would significantly and drastically affect the delivery of critical government services, while borrowing would increase the fiscal deficit by a margin that would have significant repercussions on many other sectors, including interest rates and exchange rates.

“We have since struck a middle ground and will be proposing to the National Assembly a budget cut of Ksh 177 billion and borrow the difference. The additional borrowing will increase our fiscal deficit from 3.3% to 4.6% and will be used protect the funding of critical government services as follows,” President Ruto said.