| SAM'S SENSE | NUMBERS: GOVT-TO-GOVT CLASH

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:01][music] [music] [music] >> For 2 weeks now, the country has been embroiled in a debate.

[00:00:25]A debate about statistics released by the government statistician, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, that the country grew at a declining rate of 4.6%.

[00:00:37]And here, many have had an opinion.

[00:00:40]From disputing the figures and the interpretation by media outlets to using the data to conveniently shape narratives.

[00:00:48]But then, what's at stake?

[00:00:50]Let me begin with the size of the economy.

[00:00:53]The recently transmitted budget estimates for 2026-2027 financial year suggest that the economy is now at more than 20.8 trillion shillings in size.

[00:01:05]And this figure is important because it is based on it that several factors are measured.

[00:01:11]One of them is a budget deficit to GDP ratio.

[00:01:16]This is a metric the government uses to make a case for increased borrowing.

[00:01:21]It is calculated by taking the budget gap or deficit and dividing it by the GDP.

[00:01:27]If the GDP is higher, you have a more appealing rate.

[00:01:31]And then, there is the public debt to GDP ratio, which I will shortly illustrate.

[00:01:37]Now, the National Treasury imagines that the country's GDP for purposes of the national budget is 20.8 trillion shillings.

[00:01:45]But the National Bureau of Statistics just put it at 17.6 trillion shillings.

[00:01:51]That is a difference of 3 trillion shillings.

[00:01:55]You see, the law requires the government to lower the ratio of public debt to GDP to 55% by mid-2028.

[00:02:04]Where are we now?

[00:02:05]At a debt estimate of 12.6 trillion shillings, this is 71.5% of the GDP based on the KNBS data.

[00:02:15]If the same debt figure is matched against the GDP of 20.8 trillion shillings as per the national treasury, that proportion falls to 60%.

[00:02:25]Whose figure should we use?

[00:02:27]And why is there a difference in the first place?

[00:02:30]And when the national treasury continues to pile up the public debt with more expenditure and deficits declared, what is the plan?

[00:02:38]Secondly, when a government invests taxpayers' money to a government agency to count, where do politicians find the strength to generate their own contrarian data?

[00:02:49]Simply simple things like counting how many bags of maize were produced in a year.

[00:02:55]Why should it be a source of arguments?

[00:02:58]Yet in the spirit of learning how to count what we want, the Minister of Education shows up a Monday morning with an expression of shock that certain senior schools are charging fees beyond the guidelines.

[00:03:11]A very innocent shock when schools have been doing it for years.

[00:03:16]And then you learn that in every school board, the ministry is represented in the hierarchy of leadership down to the sub-county level.

[00:03:25]But let's be shocked and absorb it, then order for an of an investigation.

[00:03:30]A counting nation that has no idea how much it costs to educate a Kenyan child from early childhood to higher education.

[00:03:38]How school capitation is an official figure, but not necessarily to be followed.

[00:03:43]How nobody knows how much money out of the declared capitation per learner effectively makes it to schools. And while students strive to learn statistics better than the adults, the counting problems evolves in the health sector.

[00:03:57]Simple measurements as how many of us are registered under the social health authority.

[00:04:02]When figures of 30 million subscribers are announced by those in government, only for the statistics bureau to report that 20.9 million were registered based on their source.

[00:04:13]Who is the source, you may ask?

[00:04:15]The social health authority.

[00:04:17]But then registration continues and so does the counting.

[00:04:22]And so there is a pattern.

[00:04:24]Exaggerate the numbers, be it textbooks distributed to schools, money released to schools, money paid to hospitals, and whatever else sounds good.

[00:04:34]But when the controller budget or the auditor general reports that certain institutions spent more money