Netizens: Kenyans on social media react to budget highlights

Treasury CS Henry Rotich addresses a press conference after reading the 2018-2019 Budget at Parliament on June 14, 2018. [Boniface Okendo/Standard]

Just like Kenyans on the streets reacted to Thursday’s Sh3.07 trillion budget that was presented by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich, Kenyans on social media were not left behind.

The reactions were based on the size of the budget, high corruption in the country that would make meeting the budget needs hard and high public debt now standing at Sh5 trillion among others.

To these ones, they reacted on why the country can come up with such ‘huge’ size of the Sh3.07 trillion budget, Sh500 billion higher  from last year’s Sh2.6 trillion budget when our neighbouring countries has lower budget size coupled with even sometimes more population than Kenya.

‏@lloydOnyango tweeted: Tanzania with a population of 60 million plus has a budget of Sh800 billion while Kenya with a population of 48 million has a budget of Sh3 Trillion! #BudgetKE2018.

‏ @ConsumersKenya tweeted: We can boast of a Sh3.07 trillion budget but with #PublicDebtKE hitting the dreaded Sh5 trillion mark, we are living way beyond our means and on excessive debt. Cut non-revenue mega projects. Lower tax on food, medicine and energy #BudgetKE2018 #ConsumersBeware.

@JOHNGITHANGA tweeted:  #BudgetKE2018 Kenyans are not upbeat about this year's budget reading...Presently, Kenya's Fiscal Deficit stands at 8.9%, a whopping Sh870 billion will go to Debt Repayments, needless to say that Corruption has significantly crippled economic growth.

@mwalimu_dida tweeted: #BudgetKE2018 our debt just escalated to 5,000,000,000,000! Can we ever recover from this? Or have we been officially recolonized?

Humour did not miss the reactions including from below twitter user Paulo Mtangazaji.

‏@PauloMtangazaji tweeted: #BudgetKE2018 totalling to Sh3.7 trillion. I think corruption should be allocated Sh1 trillion so that they can at least leave us something.