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State House is seeking to expand its pool of consultants to beef up the so-called Bottom-Up Strategy despite splashing over Sh1 billion to maintain a coterie of advisers to President William Ruto.
The Executive Office of the President is hiring on short-term contracts economists and experts in a wide range of fields, including agriculture finance, environment, climate finance, digital economy, biotechnology and carbon markets.
The consultants, preferably PhD holders with at least 10 years of work experience, will join prominent advisers, including David Ndii, Henry Rotich and Augustine Cheruiyot, in shaping Kenya’s economic agenda as Dr Ruto seeks to speed up growth under the Bottom-Up Strategy.
But this will come with additional spending as budget documents show that the existing six advisory units will spend Sh1.14 billion in the year starting July, up from Sh977 million a year earlier.
“The Executive Office of the President is seeking to develop a database of senior experts to provide consultancy services on a short-term basis,” State House Comptroller Katoo Ole Metito said in the notice without giving details.
The Ruto administration wants to speed up economic growth to 7.2 percent by 2027, with plans to invest in the agricultural sector and small businesses to help create jobs and cut poverty. That is an acceleration from the 5.6 percent growth last year that was buoyed by robust output in agriculture.
Kenya continues to grapple with widening inequality, low productivity and mounting youth unemployment and remains susceptible to economic shocks.
Its mid-term economic plan mainly focuses on agriculture, small- and medium-sized businesses, housing, universal health coverage and the digital economy.
This ties in with the profile of experts that State House is seeking.
State House is looking for consultants in macroeconomics, microeconomics, household and welfare economics, agricultural economics (value chains, agricultural finance) and natural resource economics (energy, environment, and climate finance).
It is also seeking to hire consultants in industrial economics and law and policy experts in investment climate, ease of doing business, regulation, consumer protection, competition policy, property rights, climate action, biotechnology, creative industries and digital economy.
This battery of advisers, with their offices domiciled at State House, wield incredibly huge influence on policy making, yet they only answer to one person: President Ruto.
While State House advisers under the Uhuru Kenyatta and Mwai Kibaki administrations, preferred to operate in the shadows of Cabinet Secretaries and PSs, the consultants attached to Dr Ruto have been overt and influential, with Dr Ndii being the poster boy of the realignment.
The advisers have been deeply involved in executive decisions, notably those touching on economic policy as Kenya models its presidential advisory role on the United States. The rationale is that in presidential systems that Kenya adopted under the 2010 Constitution, the President sits at the apex of policy-making, and therefore his advisers need to have executive roles.
But this has come with additional burden to taxpayers. The six advisory units will blow Sh280.5 million in salaries and perks for the year ending June, up from Sh207.8 million a year earlier, reflecting a 35 percent jump.
The budget for the advisers sits under the policy analysis and research unit of State House, whose allocation has grown more than tenfold from Sh87.2 million in the last year of Mr Kenyatta’s presidency to Sh977 million in the past fiscal year.
Mr Kenyatta had a loose advisory arrangement with the budget for his advisers such as Mutahi Ngunyi not clearly spelt out in government financial statements.
Under Dr Ruto, three of the six advisory units that deal with the management of the economy—office of economic transformation, council of economic advisors and fiscal affairs and budget policy—accounted for more than half of the budget.
Dr Ndii is the chair of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisers, the most prominent and influential player among the six.
Mr Rotich, who has served at the Treasury for six years as Cabinet Secretary, occupies the position of Senior Adviser and Head of the Office of Fiscal affairs and Budget policy.
The little-known Dr Cheruiyot is the Senior Adviser and Head of Economic Transformation Secretariat, and has largely been pulling the strings from behind the scenes.
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