Don’t mislead Kenyans with false figures

NAIROBI: Every now and then, a cloud of opinion forms, temporarily impervious to fact, reason, or even common skepticism. The Eurobond debate, and the wider public contest about the economy, may generate one such, but only if we fail to keep our wits around us. It’s useful to pick out representative bits of obfuscation, if only to pre-empt or dispel the fog.

Former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, has been the loudest voice in the broader economic, as well as the Eurobond, debate. He kicked things off with the claim that a select number of economies were growing faster than Kenya, and that we were underperforming, and could expect to be left behind. Liberia, we were told, was growing at 10.4%, Niger at 8.0% Cote D’Ivoire at 7.9%, Ethiopia at 7.5% per cent, Ghana at 7.3%, Mozambique at 7.2%, Tanzania at 7.2%, and Kenya at 5.2 per cent.