You're opening a lot of fronts.
1) Let us agree - investment in basic infrastructure (roads, water, basic railway,etc) + in people/humans (education+health) is great.
2) Investing in secondary infrastructure - airport like Isiolo or Eldoret - Lamu port or LAPSET- or say light rail - with doubtful rate of returns - is not good.
3) Reducing recurrent expenditure - by reducing public sector leeches like KQ and 200 losses making SOES - and even reducing gov employees is great - reduced recurrent expenditure - increase budget for capital invest in #1
4) Investing from savings is great - be it from life insurance, pension, private savings lent to gov - as domestic debt - is great.
5) Leveraging esp Low Interest Low Maturity loans LIke CHINA/IMF/WB is great - borrowing commercial loans from Eurobond and say CITIBANK is very dangerous.
So in summary Lets agree
1) Let us continue to invest in basic infra
2) Let us continue to do social investment in HCI - education and HEALTH
(TODAY NHIF - universal health insurance)3) Let us avoid white elephants in secondary infrastructure - fancy airport like Isiolo or Lamu now.
4) Let us reduce public sector that are eating budget - recurrent - by selling 200 SOES- KQs, Mumias, name them - getting bailouts.
5) Let us cut corruption in the public sector - so we can get a lot more infra built.
6) Let us borrow from China/WB/AFDB - low interest long maturity loans...concessionary some zero interest is as good as savings.
7) Let us avoid commercial foreign loans with high interest and short maturity like EuroBond
Kwani akiiba nitakula kwake? Mimi najitafutiea pesa yangu. I am only interested in intellectual debate like that.
Now that article is okay - public sector investment in basic infrastructure (roads, railways, water, electricity) and social (education+health) is critical.
Now the article clearly said - they avoided recurrent expenditure - growing more than 10% - and used it invest.
It doesnt talk anything about it - debt situation in both countries - and stuff like population growth that eventually hobbled kenya. I believe Kenya education outcomes were okay.
Borrowing to invest in same - I dont see any problem. Borrowing like now to fund recurrent expenditure is what I am totally opposed.
It's why China loans are the best - they are ringfenced for projects - that is capital investments.
Borrowing from World Bank/IMF/Eurobond - and throwing the money into budgetary support pit - where money can be used for anything - is why Africa has not developed all these years - until Chinese arrived.
Bottomline - we need both social and infra investment - where the money will come from - for me is irrelevant - as long as we are not borrowing to pay salaries or buy tissues - or similarly saving money to pay salaries or buy cars.
Bullshit. One can build useless projects like SGR. Also Chinese force taxpayers to pay through the nose for the kickbacks they give corrupt political elites, saddle us with useless white elephants, take away local jobs and snare us with unpayable debts.
The article says those public sector investments in roads water and education come from your budgets not mikopo, fahamu.
What do you mean debt situation in both countries?
where the money will come from - for me is irrelevant
Absolutely wrong. Without going into the utility of the infrastructure and the political economy calculations ( think of Mt Kenya roads the current fool is building) You borrow from international markets there we have to pay in foreign currency local currency depreciates every year yet get ballooning debt situation. How did we end up in the debt distress situation we are in where we can't even pay interest let alone principal?
If it comes from domestic market it is slightly better, but if too much it crowds out private sector lending - not good.
We should have balanced budgets, period.
No deficits.