State of economy one Dr Ndii

[KenyanPlato]

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His argument is that it is over for jubilee as far as economy expansion is concerned. He argues it is a matter of managing crisis till 2022. On employment he contends it a matter of policy trickle down economic policy versus bottom up. Where the people are or where capital is. 26 percent of Kenyans are underemployed meaning they are unproductive.

What is the fix? Change policy and have the political will to implement it

[Georgesoros]

[KenyanPlato]

You are right that is the tradedy of the current crop of politicians in Kenya.

[Nefertiti]

Ndii is a gloomster and doomster. Wish he had positive suggestions like his peer Bitange Ndemo. Along the diagnosis, offer a prescription and administer the dosage if possible. That's the full treatment.

Economics, unlike science and engineering, hardly evolve with the times. We still have 2000 years old double entry system. Since 300BC. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stuff. At least Ndemo laments slow progress in uptake of scitech. Most Ndii viewpoints are antiques. Not everything is economics.

The economy in Kenya has MASSIVE headroom for growth. We are seeing the digital dividend right now. The demographic dividend is next. Then the infra dividend will follow once there is enough talent and capital to leverage it. The synergy has a leapfrog potential. The noises in the streets are mostly resistance to the shifting ground - brick & mortar to digital. Only war can derail Kenya.

[RV Pundit]

Refreshing read from you. Dr Ndoom has been predicting doom ever since I don't know what. Equity made a mistake and put him in the board. They fired him and Equity now is huge conglomerate with assets at nearly 700B kshs.

Ndii is a gloomster and doomster. Wish he had positive suggestions like his peer Bitange Ndemo. Along the diagnosis, offer a prescription and administer the dosage if possible. That's the full treatment.

Economics, unlike science and engineering, hardly evolve with the times. We still have 2000 years old double entry system. Since 300BC. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stuff. At least Ndemo laments slow progress in uptake of scitech. Most Ndii viewpoints are antiques. Not everything is economics.

The economy in Kenya has MASSIVE headroom for growth. We are seeing the digital dividend right now. The demographic dividend is next. Then the infra dividend will follow once there is enough talent and capital to leverage it. The synergy has a leapfrog potential. The noises in the streets are mostly resistance to the shifting ground - brick & mortar to digital. Only war can derail Kenya.

[Nefertiti]

Dr Doom is not brilliant and the cynicism obfuscates his low quality reasoning. The politics is a cover not an impediment.

Refreshing read from you. Dr Ndoom has been predicting doom ever since I don't know what. Equity made a mistake and put him in the board. They fired him and Equity now is huge conglomerate with assets at nearly 700B kshs.

[RV Pundit]

Absolutely, he wears the Oxford phd cover like some badge - and yet he studied in Oxford Africa affairs dept (a waste bag).

Dr Doom is not brilliant and the cynicism obfuscates his low quality reasoning. The politics is a cover not an impediment.

[hk]

Ndii's point is that treasury knows the solution but don't have the willpower to implement the solution. Everyone from CBK governor to Former economic adviser to president has pointed out the effects of going on debt binge and implications on the private sector. I believe some of the people who're now in treasury were Ndii's lecturers at UON.
We have a subdued private sector that's not able to fully take advantage of digital and demographics dividends. Kenya has massive potential the question is what type of policy needed to harness that potential.

[RV Pundit]

I think credit squeeze from interest capping will solve some of these problems.

Ndii's point is that treasury knows the solution but don't have the willpower to implement the solution. Everyone from CBK governor to Former economic adviser to president has pointed out the effects of going on debt binge and implications on the private sector. I believe some of the people who're now in treasury were Ndii's lecturers at UON.
We have a subdued private sector that's not able to fully take advantage of digital and demographics dividends. Kenya has massive potential the question is what type of policy needed to harness that potential.

[Nefertiti]

Ndii's point is that treasury knows the solution but don't have the willpower to implement the solution. Everyone from CBK governor to Former economic adviser to president has pointed out the effects of going on debt binge and implications on the private sector. I believe some of the people who're now in treasury were Ndii's lecturers at UON.
We have a subdued private sector that's not able to fully take advantage of digital and demographics dividends. Kenya has massive potential the question is what type of policy needed to harness that potential.

Ndii is wrong - Treasury does not know nor have a solution. The state has limited levers to control the economy. Every successful nation has a dominant private sector - and it is a handy excuse to say the interest cap is the only impediment to growth. If there was sterling talent in Kenya - capital would trickle in via VC and FDI. The world is flat and the whining MSMEs are mostly brick & mortar models. Agric has been drifting since the 70s - when tea & coffee commodity exchanges premiered on the globe. After the "boom" they commoditized and the slaggards collapsed. Real estate, travel, oil & gas - any globalized sector soon separates the wheat from the chaff. Capital is global - Bitpesa or Cellulant has $50m from mzungu pensioners. Just as digital - demographic dividend will kick in regardless of interest caps. Cause low dependency ratio means more savings, better education, better manpower - more capital flows to tap it.

Ndiiconomics are antiques - outdated stuff. Same ideas since Julius Caesar hit the Mediterranean to trade ships for grains and the Egyptian bride. It is why we grapple with the reality of mjengo crew tarmacking along the shiny rail - excellent foot utility - cause everywhere else is mud, sewage and congestion - despite pie-in-the-sky GDP and such metrics.

In short - Ndii is not biased, he is incompetent. It is a good idea to squeeze the traditional MSMSE to build infrastructure for a period. Cause deserving ventures will still attract capital easily. I principally disagree with GoK mispriorities, poor execution and runaway sleaze.

[KenyanPlato]

Robina
You think economics is a antiquated field? All I am hearing you two talk is a lot of wishy washy stuff that are neither finance or economics. Here the economic question is simple. How do you increase productivity? You have i think 15 million qorkerz underemployed and in low productivity jobs. You want to increase their productivity to create more ? How do you do it? We did the infrastructure thing it has grown govt spending and not solved this problem

[RV Pundit]

Productivity - I  think revitalizing technical and vocational training - for millions of kids who don't make it to university is good start - Thanks to Jubilee focus on TIVET (and Matiangi mass failure) - We have doubled enrollment from 150K students to nearly 300k - in 2-3yrs. The target is to enroll 2M kids by 2022. Therefore gov has to keep investing in building more and more TIVET institutions. University enrollment of 500k - is probably good enough for now - we don't have that much white collar jobs for all those graduates.

Then next battle is to provide them with blue-collar jobs - manufacturing jobs - and this is where gov has to listen to manufacturers - and provide them what they want - cheap reliable electricity,remove minimum wages, make labour laws easy to hire & fire, provide roads & rail (make it cheap & efficient), ease of  doing business. Build more EPZ/SEZ where this conditions can be provided. Ban Mitumba and some of unnecessary imports - and do import-substitution - we already spend 18-20B dollars importing many useless things we can make.

And provides others with cheap capital - convert all the women/youth enterprises into Devolpment Bank that can give low interest rate to people too risk for commercial banks - possibly grant every TIVET graduate with some start up capital - build business/industrial hubs/ -where they can start their own enterprises.

And of course make sure the macro-economics are on poin - growing economy, low interest rate, low inflation rate - will eventually generate jobs.
 

Robina
You think economics is a antiquated field? All I am hearing you two talk is a lot of wishy washy stuff that are neither finance or economics. Here the economic question is simple. How do you increase productivity? You have i think 15 million qorkerz underemployed and in low productivity jobs. You want to increase their productivity to create more ? How do you do it? We did the infrastructure thing it has grown govt spending and not solved this problem

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Robina
You think economics is a antiquated field? All I am hearing you two talk is a lot of wishy washy stuff that are neither finance or economics. Here the economic question is simple. How do you increase productivity? You have i think 15 million qorkerz underemployed and in low productivity jobs. You want to increase their productivity to create more ? How do you do it? We did the infrastructure thing it has grown govt spending and not solved this problem

That's what I understand Ndii to be saying.  How and why nobody is exploiting the potential of all those bodies and brains to the full.  A relevant question regardless of the level of available technology.

[Nefertiti]

Robina
You think economics is a antiquated field? All I am hearing you two talk is a lot of wishy washy stuff that are neither finance or economics. Here the economic question is simple. How do you increase productivity? You have i think 15 million qorkerz underemployed and in low productivity jobs. You want to increase their productivity to create more ? How do you do it? We did the infrastructure thing it has grown govt spending and not solved this problem

That's what I understand Ndii to be saying.  How and why nobody is exploiting the potential of all those bodies and brains to the full.  A relevant question regardless of the level of available technology.

My take on Ndii is diagnosis with neither prescription nor medication. Why should we trust his diagnosis?

[Nefertiti]

Robina
You think economics is a antiquated field? All I am hearing you two talk is a lot of wishy washy stuff that are neither finance or economics. Here the economic question is simple. How do you increase productivity? You have i think 15 million qorkerz underemployed and in low productivity jobs. You want to increase their productivity to create more ? How do you do it? We did the infrastructure thing it has grown govt spending and not solved this problem

Yes, a big chunk of economics is outdated. Too many loopholes in the old theories. For instance on this blog and other fora, people struggle to capture reality - which economic metrics don't capture. GDP, GNP, per capita, HDI, Gini. How is the economy doing? You can only use English not economics to express the situation.

I know you're a management consultant. Most of you lot are antiques. You walk into a struggling business, say KQ, and the output is a massive bill and whitepaper. Bye! Imagine your doctor says you have a bad heart - and sayonara, good luck! Of course the armchair analysis is usually already tried and failed due to circumstance. Management consulting is a talkshop with no action aka politics.

I don't mean that natural or physical sciences or engineering are better. That's a separate matter. But at least physicians or astronomists face out and keep researching and discovering. Stuff like the theory of competition really - perfect competition is supposed to cause innovation. But we all know better, no? Who is more innovative - Safaricom or KQ? Google or GE? It is the monopoly that innovates - not the cash-strapped restaurant or retail business. Restaurants are a perfect competition - but zero innovation - cause no cash. It is why they put granny at the counter and the kids do the dishes in the back. The entire market theory is outdated. Newtonian classics were supplanted first by quantum then Einstein's relativity. Economic inventions or innovations are slow, scarce or non existent.

[KenyanPlato]

You are misunderstanding Dr Ndii Robina. He is saying the illness is govt spendinf led growth instead of focusing on increasing productivity with the economy that serves majority. His prescription is jubilee should have focused on agriculture and smes and other much needed infrastructures like sewer lines instead of a few big infrastructure projects..he illustrates how govt borrowing has shifted 100 billion from smes to govt ...i agree about economics being very dicey and needs a lot of debating or policy shifts plus political will to implement..it is pseudo science the onky way to know if an economic policy is going to work is to test in small scale and then scale it up ...i think people just hate Ndii politics and thus do not like his ideas.

One thing about @ndii is that he has years of field exprience and is a data driven type of guy so any thing he says is backed with this..

HK is right that Ndii is close to govt economists.

He believes what he is saying is common knowledge with govt policy makers is only that there is no political will ..uhuru is focused on corporate private sector growth he wrongly believed that he could leap frog kenya development using this model.

[Nefertiti]

Plato most economic theories are as old as Greek philosophy. Perhaps we should evolve classic economics into quantum economics.

[KenyanPlato]

Productivity - I  think revitalizing technical and vocational training - for millions of kids who don't make it to university is good start - Thanks to Jubilee focus on TIVET (and Matiangi mass failure) - We have doubled enrollment from 150K students to nearly 300k - in 2-3yrs. The target is to enroll 2M kids by 2022. Therefore gov has to keep investing in building more and more TIVET institutions. University enrollment of 500k - is probably good enough for now - we don't have that much white collar jobs for all those graduates.

Then next battle is to provide them with blue-collar jobs - manufacturing jobs - and this is where gov has to listen to manufacturers - and provide them what they want - cheap reliable electricity,remove minimum wages, make labour laws easy to hire & fire, provide roads & rail (make it cheap & efficient), ease of  doing business. Build more EPZ/SEZ where this conditions can be provided. Ban Mitumba and some of unnecessary imports - and do import-substitution - we already spend 18-20B dollars importing many useless things we can make.

And provides others with cheap capital - convert all the women/youth enterprises into Devolpment Bank that can give low interest rate to people too risk for commercial banks - possibly grant every TIVET graduate with some start up capital - build business/industrial hubs/ -where they can start their own enterprises.

And of course make sure the macro-economics are on poin - growing economy, low interest rate, low inflation rate - will eventually generate jobs.
 

Robina
You think economics is a antiquated field? All I am hearing you two talk is a lot of wishy washy stuff that are neither finance or economics. Here the economic question is simple. How do you increase productivity? You have i think 15 million qorkerz underemployed and in low productivity jobs. You want to increase their productivity to create more ? How do you do it? We did the infrastructure thing it has grown govt spending and not solved this problem

So you think what we need is more plumbers machinists and electricians? Where are these jobs that are have no  workers due to lack of skills.. The only thing i agree with is textile we have agoa we can scale that up.

Anyway jubilee 10 years are done. We got sgr stuck in suswa. I just saw that judiciary took 50 percent budgetary austerity hair cut..we have a nyachae in finance cutting with scalpel ...hopefully your guy will be elected and we see whst he can do for 10 years

[KenyanPlato]

Plato most economic theories are as old as Greek philosophy. Perhaps we should evolve classic economics into quantum economics.

We are now operating under the neoliberal theory where the market is the king and everythig else trickles down. I think economics is voodoo you just have to create as you go and have everyone buy into it.. It is something very hard to grasp c

[Nefertiti]

Plato most economic theories are as old as Greek philosophy. Perhaps we should evolve classic economics into quantum economics.

We are now operating under the neoliberal theory where the market is the king and everythig else trickles down. I think economics is voodoo you just have to create as you go and have everyone buy into it.. It is something very hard to grasp c

In short it's politics. By the way your moniker really suits you.