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| CS Machogu watering a plant |
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu Tuesday led Nyamira residents and county officials in disseminating the Fourth Medium Term Plan (MTP) programmes to be implemented in line with the government’s Bottom Up-up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA).
Machogu observed that to date the government has made high strides in various development sectors, ever since the first five year MTPs were initiated in 2008, citing that there has been a steady economic growth since then, and consequently Kenya has transformed from a low income to a middle lower income country.
“The government’s BETA manifesto has been transformed into actionable priority interventions in the fourth MTP, with an agenda geared towards economic turn-around and inclusive growth through a value chain approach in five core pillars.
The pillars include agriculture, Micro, Small and Medium Housing and Settlement, Healthcare, Digital Superhighway and creative economy,” Machogu stated.
“The national departments and devolved units implementing the fourth MTP programmes and projects must seamlessly coordinate as a team to ensure the target audience, who are the common Wananchi benefits from these development projects and thus boost our country’s economic and social class,” he advised.
The CS pointed out that national government will not fund all their projected development projects in the county, but they will share in some and will have to be fully funded by the county governments or source for donor funding or create public private partnership with investors to complete their projected development plans since the resource from national treasury is already overstretched.
Machogu advised the county government officials to be proactive in supporting economic activities, which will boost their revenues, like agricultural initiatives both in dairy, cash crop and food crops, initiate value addition in the production chains instead of selling raw products to increase their income base and further create market linkages beyond our border for our local products.
Nyamira County Executive for Finance, ICT and Economic Planning Dr. Geoffrey Nyakoe in his presentation outlined that Nyamira County will leverage on existing linkages in various development sectors in line with County Integrated Development plans (CIDPS) and those of BETA actionable pillars.
“Our key transformative projects in line with the and fourth MTP include an Integrated Agro Industrial Park, construction of a rehabilitation centre for alcohol and substance abusers, construction of a mother child hospital to reduce maternal and neonatal deaths, increase Early Childhood Development Centres (ECDEs), in collaboration with KERRA and KURRA upgrade of gravel roads to bitumen standards across the county, establishment of a solar power plant at Sironga area, and establishment of a solid waste management plant and sewerage system,” said Nyakoe.
The county Executive promised that the county will monitor, capacity build, strengthen key relevant departments to efficiently plan, prioritize and execute projects to realize the main development objective for the people of Nyamira.
The fourth MTP whose implementation timeframe is between 2023 -2027 is the last five-year MTP of the Kenya vision 2030 expected to transition the country to the next Long term development blueprint.
By Deborah Bochere