President Willaim Ruto's major achievements are enhanced agricultural production, jobs, revenue increases and better healthcare, according to a report on his performance since he assumed office two years ago.
A scorecard of his Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda pillars highlights leaps in agriculture, health, housing, micro small and medium enterprises (MSME), digital and creative economy sectors.
According to the report, 103,000 houses have been constructed through the affordable housing project, with more than Sh50 billion disbursed through the Hustler Fund initiative.
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The scorecard, compiled by the Deputy Chief of Staff, Performance Delivery Management Eliud Owalo comes in the wake of youth-led protests, driven largely by a growing sense of disenfranchisement over the government’s apparent broken promises.
It also comes ahead of a planned signing of performance contracts for new Cabinet secretaries, Ruto’s plan of ensuring efficiency in his administration. The President, sworn in on September 13, 2022 is banking on the scorecard to evaluate the performance of his ministers.
On agriculture, the President touts the reduction in the costs of farm inputs, increasing farmers’ incomes and creating jobs in the sector, as well as improving agricultural productivity and value addition as key achievements.
The scorecard highlights the fertiliser subsidy programme, which it notes led to increased maize production and reduced imports by a third, as well as lowering the cost of unga.
Similarly, it touts the registration of six million farmers, which the scorecard argues enhanced the distribution of fertiliser bags.
“Since its launch in 2022, the number of fertiliser bags distributed to farmers has risen by 7.2 million bags from 1.4 million in 2022 to 8.6 million by 2024, representing a 514 percent increase,” the scorecard reads in part.
Other achievements in agriculture include the improvement of value chains in the tea, edible oils, leather, and dairy value chains, among others.
“The Government has raised the guaranteed minimum price for milk from Sh37 in 2022 to Sh50 per litre in 2024, representing a 35 percent increase. As a result, milk production has grown by 13 percent, from 4.6 billion litres in 2022 to 5.2 billion litres in 2024,” adds the scorecard.
On the MSME economy, the report touts Ruto’s Hustler Fund and the refurbishment and equipping of “common user facilities” and industrial parks as key achievements.
“Between 2022 to date the Government has established and operationalised the Hustler Fund and 21.87 million individuals have so far joined and benefitted from the fund which has disbursed Sh54.9 billion to individual applicants. The fund has helped the individual borrowers to save Sh3.1 billion,” the report states adding that more than 600,000 groups had subscribed to the fund, receiving Sh185.8 million in loans.
Ruto’s pet project, affordable housing, also features in Owalo’s document. It states that developers constructing 100 housing units per year had benefited from a drop by half of their corporate tax, initially at 30 per cent.
Similarly, the scorecard states that the number of affordable housing units had increased from nearly 9,000 to more than 100,000, as well as jobs in the housing sector.
“The total number of jobs created in the affordable housing project has increased from 26,616 in 2022 to 140,610 in 2024,” says the report, which also highlights a 40 per cent increase in mortgage refinancing.
Achievements in the healthcare sector include the Social Health Insurance, which Ruto argues will enhance health at the primary level and also better access to specialised care.