Nominated Treasury Cabinet Secretary, John Mbadi, welcome to the hot seat. Congratulations! You will require all the luck you can get. The big question is, where does Kenya go from here?

First, there is a need to acknowledge the very hard and tough work that has gone into stabilizing the economy over the last two years. Kudos to the outgoing CS, Njuguna Ndungu. Public service can be a thankless task.

But you must go one step further. Your predecessor was locked into crisis mode and failed to draw up a roadmap for recovery.

You will not grow the economy if you do not put together a recovery plan. Give yourself a time frame of three months and get your experts to develop one. The economy must grow. Period. That is the only way you can help Kenya.

The relationship between Kenya and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank needs a reset.  It has been clearly demonstrated that the IMF does not care if the country burns. That they could push the government to go ahead with a taxation plan that they knew would cause Kenya to burn just to satisfy their disastrous dogma is preposterous.

Result – one month of death and destruction! Is the IMF happy now? The next round table must put everything aside and start a fresh conversation on what Kenya needs, and how these two institutions can help the country ease out of the current economic crisis. That is assuming they mean well.

You now have a blank cheque to re imagine the budget. The time is now to put up new structures for Kenya. The next budget process must be informed by the debt audit that was commissioned by President William Ruto. The budget cannot continue being under pressure from debts Kenyans have no idea of. Push the debt audit team to meet their three-month deadline.

Critically and immediately find ways of injecting cash flows into the economy. With money in people’s pockets, the pressure on the government will ease enough to enable you to work.

Privatizations are low-hanging fruits. Divest, at least partially, government shareholding in Safaricom, Kenya Reinsurance Plaza, and KenGen, among others. These will provide an immediate injection of government revenues to support the budget. Push the Asset Recovery Agency to work with greater speed and purpose. They should be recovering billions of shillings of corruptly acquired wealth every month. Create a fund for these money to be used for debt repayment.

To start addressing youth unemployment, all the stalled or suspended youth programmes must be reinstated immediately.

There will be no shortage of development partners to support you. President Ruto has announced the return of Kazi Mtaani. There are others. The crisis in Kenya today is a youth crisis. Throw all fiscal solutions you can at it.

Embrace transparency and openness. Treasury is known to be notoriously secretive. Open all the windows and curtains in that building. Put out quarterly accountability reports of all that is going on. That way you carry Kenyans along. Rebuilding the credibility of the Treasury must be one of your key performance indicators, and will be a long and arduous journey.

Kenya needs a long-term bond to start paying off all pending bills as a means of rejuvenating businesses. This is a surefire way to get the economy booming again. This must be among your most urgent assignments. Of the huge string of projects signed up over the last two years, none has started. Make that among your priorities. These are really low-hanging fruits.

The Treasury requires a new negotiation team when the government goes out for all these foreign trips. The performance so far has been dismal.

Mr Mbadi, if you want radical results, you must take radical measures. And this reset must be achieved within the first 100 days or you forget it! The country is ready for an overhaul. Go for it.

— Gathu Kaara can be reached at
[email protected]