President William Ruto has commended his economic advisors led by economist David Ndii for saving the country about USD500 million monthly.

According to the President, the economists have put together a programme that allows the country to import fuel using Kenyan Shillings instead of US dollars.

“My economic advisors David Ndii, Mohammed Hassan, Davis Chirchir- and the young man at EPRA. Those four gentlemen have done something phenomenal in our country; they have managed to put together a programme that has taken us away from looking for USD500 million every month to buy our fuel needs, which was slowly snowballing into a crisis. Today as a country we can buy fuel in Kenya Shillings, something that many people never thought would be possible,” President Ruto said.

Currently, oil marketers require at least USD 500 million (Ksh64 billion) every month to import approximately 740,000 tonnes of fuel.

Speaking in March, Energy and PetroleumCaninet Secretary Davis ChirChir said that the amount used by oil marketing companies (OMCs) accounts to 30 per cent of the country’s total dollar requirements.

“The US dollar requirements by OMCs currently account for about 30 per cent of Kenya’s total US dollar requirements, putting foreign exchange reserves under pressure, causing serious deficiency in availability of US dollars and the rate at which the US dollar is made available. This has resulted in the depreciation of the Kenya shilling,” Chirchir said.

Ndii was in October 2022 appointed as the chair of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, with Hassan and Dr Nancy Laibuni joining the committee as members.

Ndii, considered as the mastermind of Ruto’s bottom-up economic model, served as the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party strategist and economist before the elections in August 2022.

Ndii’s criticism on the government

The comments by President Ruto have come hours after the economist criticised the government for what he termed as wasteful expenditure.

Speaking to Citizen TV on Monday night, Ndii said that the current state, in which salaries for civil servants have been delayed, was attributable to poor planning.

“Government is extremely wasteful, there is not a single day that I am not exasperated by not just how wasteful it is but by how deliberate it is and how unbothered people are. It is true we have a very profligate government,” said Ndii.

“I agree with some of the criticisms that are pointed out by the people, that we are not demonstrating frugality that is consistent with the situation we are in as an economy.”

Ndii likened the current political and economic instability to “political mismanagement” that he claims happened during the late President Mwai Kibaki’s time.