Chief Cabinet Minister Musalia Mudavadi and CS for Cooperatives & Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Development Simon Chelugui have both called on Kenyans to embrace the fiscal culture of saving. This would be a viable means for citizens to grow wealth and contribute to national economic development.
Both ministers reported that they had observed how savings accumulated by individuals, enterprises, and governments played a crucial role in achieving sustainable national economic growth.
They stated that there was a need to encourage Kenyans regardless of their income to take up a savings culture, especially long-term saving. This in turn would support investment for economic growth in the country resulting in higher national productivity, and wealth for individuals as well as households.
Mudavadi noted the robustness of cooperatives and how developed economies of both the East and West had optimized them, giving an example of Denmark, which has a very strong cooperative movement to date.
He supported the call by President William Ruto for Kenyans to focus on agriculture in order to address endemic issues that are food insecurity and inflated costs of living.
On his part, Cooperative CS Simon Chelugui underscored the importance to shift from social protection to social security emphasizing that it would enable members to protects their futures.
He commended the Management of Tower Sacco for registering remarkable growth since it was established, making it stand out among the few very successful and best-performing Saccos nationwide.
Tower Sacco, has a capital asset base of Ksh 20 billion and Kshs. 16.4 billion loan book and another Kshs. 15 billion deposits, which the CS described as a great achievement.
A section of leaders from Nyandarua County called on the government to intervene and help salvage a multi-million Ol-Kalou down which is on the verge of collapse due to outstanding loans that are yet to be serviced.
Senator John Methu and Women Rep’ Faith Gitau said the Ol-Kalou dairy plays an integral role in supporting hundreds of farmers who have invested in the dairy cooperative, but were now gazing to its closure and or being auctioned to offset the loans.
However, Mr. Chelugui reported of an MOU between the government and the Cooperative Bank (financiers of the dairy) to look into how they will review and renegotiate the terms and the loan payment period to help the dairy society continue to operate.