Barclays Africa Group chief economist Jeff Gable[Photo/SokoDirectory]For every Sh10 collected as taxes in the year to June Kenya will use Sh4.50 for debt payments, underlining the burden of mounting government borrowing.The treasury data show that it will pay Sh658.2 billion for loans in the current financial year.The debt payment is Sh223 billion more than the Sh435.7 billion that taxpayers paid in the year ended June. The public debt stood at Sh4.48 trillion in September, up from Sh3.5 trillion in March 2015 and Sh2.1 trillion in November 2013.Barclays Africa Group chief economist Jeff Gable warned Tuesday that unless the private sector is involved in infrastructure investment debt repayments would continue to take a larger share of the taxes.“There must be opportunities for private participation that allows the government to use its tax revenue to do something else,” Mr Gable said in Nairobi during the launch of Barclays Africa 2017-18 Macro-Economic Report.“But there is nothing that makes Kenya special in that environment. This is a broader issue for a continent for its unending appetite for infrastructure development.”The debt repayment will be nearly double Kenya’s combined development spend of Sh351 billion in the current year and more than eight times that of infrastructure like roads whose spend is expected at Sh76.89 billion.It is more than double the Sh306 billion allocated to the 47 counties and Sh14 billion for revamping infrastructure in educational institutions.

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