VISION 2030

Kenya may never realise Vision 2030 unless deliberate measures are placed to mitigate the effects of climate change, Prime Minister Raila Odinga said on Friday.

He informed the 20th meeting of the National Economic and Social Council that the preliminary studies into the development trend since the launch of the target some two years ago indicated that the nation had failed to realise the envisaged level of progress over the period.

The Premier said a report by the Stockholm Research Institute attributed the worrying scenario to the ripple effects of global warming whose culmination was marred by adverse weather patterns including drought and floods.

“We have to take full account of climate change to realise our vision 2030 goal because the findings projects that the economy needs to grow at an annual rate of 12.6 percent to meet the 10 percent GDP target the country intends to realise at the end of the period,” he said.

Mr Odinga in the same vein told council members to set tenable and realistic targets which the economy could effectively sustain arguing that most of the policy papers were chocked by too many priorities which made their realisation impossible.

“ A typical example is the blue print for the universal health insurance scheme which was projected to generate Sh59 billion in 2010 and later projected to scale up to Sh71 billion by the year 2012.But turns out to be very unrealistic,” he said.

The PM said the global phenomena had derailed most government plans which could have been achieved only if all other factors remained constant and called on the need for a proper evaluation of priorities.

“The government should not promise what it cannot deliver but set tenable goals within the scope of budgetary allocation to respective ministries,” he said.

The PM who presided over the opening session of the meeting held at a Naivasha hotel insisted that mitigation of climate change and reduction of poverty still remained the key yardstick for the transformation of the country.

He said Kenya had the potential to move from a third world to a middle income economy by the year 2030 only if the priorities were put right citing the example of Singapore which was fully industrialised after adopting sound policy practices.

Mr Odinga recommended plans for the country to embark on green energy initiatives to reduce dependency on oil and other sources of power that were not friendly to the environment.