President William Ruto has announced that at least four million Kenyans who were blacklisted by Credit Reference Bureaus (CRBs) will be ejected from the negative listing by November 1.
Speaking during a media briefing in Nairobi on Wednesday, September 28, 2022, Ruto said that CRB listing should be used to instil financial discipline, rather than "an all-or-nothing affair".
"I'm very happy that between four to five million Kenyans will, by beginning of November, be out of the CRB blacklist. This is very important because these Kenyans have been excluded from any formal borrowing and have been left at the mercies of shylocks that exploit them," President Ruto said.
"I want to commit that the government isn't against credit listing. We support CRBs as a mechanism of instilling financial discipline in our financial sector but we don't want credit listing to be an all-or-nothing engagement," he added.
President Ruto spoke during an event held by Safaricom, NCBA and KCB Bank, where daily interest rates for the Fuliza overdraft facility were slashed by 50 per cent.
"I appreciate that today we are having a conversation about hustlers. I have been sent by your customers; the people who can't make it to the negotiating table," Ruto told the companies.
Ruto on savings and borrowing
Ruto also encouraged the lenders to inspire saving among their clientele, more than borrowing as witnessed in the current setting.
"Borrowing functions best when we have savings because you cannot borrow what you don't have. We have continuously borrowed the savings of others and that is why we are becoming slaves to our lenders," he explained.
According to 2021 data by Metropol, one of the three licensed CRBs, the number of loan accounts negatively listed with CRBs hit 14 million from 9.6 million in August 2020.
