Why manufacture guns rather than garments? Ruto questions Uhurus Ksh.4B gun factory
United Democratic Alliance (UDA) presidential candidate William
Ruto has hit out at the country's small arms factory in Ruiru, Kiambu County
saying it does not make economic sense.
While questioning the sense of investing
Ksh.4 billion in a factory that would only create 100 jobs, the Deputy
President said it would have been better to build garment
factories that cost less and employ more people.
"We have recently inaugurated a
firearms factory that cost Ksh.4 billion and celebrated the fact that it will
create 100 or so jobs. This works out to an investment of Ksh.40 million per
job," he said in his Kenya Kwanza coalition manifesto launch.
"In the same country, the
County Government of Kitui established a garment factory with a capacity for 600
jobs at a cost of Ksh.168 million, Ksh.280,000 per job. The Ksh.4 billion gun
factory investment is the equivalent of 24 Kitui garment factories and 14,000
jobs."
President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the Ksh.4 billion factory, with a single-shift
annual production capacity of 12,000 assault rifles in April last year.
The president said it will
lower the cost of acquiring weapons for Kenya’s security agencies and establish
a sustainable national security industrial base that provides jobs for the
Kenyan youth.
"The question is why we
have stayed on this path, why the government did not heed its own clarion call
to restructure the economy, why we would choose to manufacture guns rather than
garments," questioned Ruto.
The UDA party honcho was
drumming support for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) saying they
are an integral part of the economy.
"The Kenyan workforce is
now in the order of 19 million
people. Of these, just under three million, only 15 percent work in formal jobs
in both public and private sector, with private sector employing two million
and public sector just under 900,000. The other 16 million (85 percent) work in
micro and small enterprises (MSMEs) both formal and informal," he said.
"According to Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) data in 2016, licensed stable MSMEs generated an operating surplus of Ksh.50,000 per employee a month, while those in the “lottery” economy generated Ksh.3,250. In other words, the workers in formal MSMEs were 15 times more productive than those in the lottery economy."
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