Speaking on Sunday during a church service in Molo, Nakuru County, Ruto said he had kept his word to deepen financial inclusion.
“We have made that commitment come true. Seven million Kenyans who were blacklisted in CRB all of them have been removed,” Ruto said.
Ruto had promised to have at least four million Kenyans opted out of adverse CRB listing.
Addressing a joint press conference with CEOs of Safaricom, KCB and NCBA in September 2022, he stated that the action is crucial because many individuals have been shut out of formal borrowing.
“I am very happy that between four to five million Kenyans will be out of the CRB blacklist by the beginning of November,” he said at the time.
“This is very important; 4 million Kenyans have been excluded from any formal borrowing because of blacklisting. They have been left at the mercy of shylocks.”
He pushed for the recalibration of the CRB listing mechanism and asked the credit bureau to travel the road with “hustlers” to avoid disadvantaging those at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
“Governor please explain to our people in the CRB space that we should change the model of listing so that we do not make an all-or-nothing process, and unfairly disadvantage borrowers,” he told then Central Bank boss Patrick Njoroge.
He said he had kept his word to deepen financial inclusion for all Kenyans regardless of their social standing. President Ruto urged those who have been removed from the blacklist to take advantage of the hustler fund to access credit services.
He praised the residents of Nakuru County who have so far borrowed 1.8 billion shillings from the Hustler Fund and for registering the highest repayment rate of 73 percent.
This is the second time the government is removing defaulters from CRB listing after mobile digital lenders were barred from blacklisting borrowers who default on loans of less than Sh1,000.
Data from the country’s three CRBs showed that borrowers who had defaulted on digital loans of less than Sh1,000 made up the bulk of 4.6 million borrowers blacklisted at the time.
The new administration is picking from retired President Uhuru Kenyatta’s playbook who last year stopped listing defaulters on loans of less than Sh5 million as a measure to cushion borrowers hit hard by Covid-19 economic shocks.
The CRBs are expected to resume these listings tomorrow when the moratorium is slated to end.
By Emodia Hallan