President William Ruto has announced that about 4 - 5 million Kenyans who have been blacklisted in the CRB will be out of the listing by the beginning of November.
Ruto said that during the Safaricom, KCB and NCBA media briefing on financial inclusion held on Wednesday at the Norfolk Hotel, Nairobi.
The president lauded the credit providers and the stakeholders in that sector for planning toward providing a graduated credit score listing instead of blacklisting creditors.
“I’m very happy that between 4-5 million Kenyans will, by the beginning of November, be out of the CRB blacklist,” Ruto said.
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“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.”
The president said the move is a positive development for millions of Kenyans who are excluded from accessing credit and would enable MSMEs to have the access to credit facilities.
The president also noted that his government was not against the CRBs and expressed his support for the same.
However, the government wants an inclusive platform that rewards people with good credit scores.
"The government is not against credit listing In fact we support CRBs as a mechanism. What we are asking is we don't want credit listing to be an all-or-nothing. We want it to be a platform where everyone is doing their best. Instead of people being in or out there is a credit rank where people can rise," Ruto said.
“Instead of blacklisting, we can have a graduated listing of borrowers based on how they have borrowed and how they have paid back.”
He said the model was a universal principle of rating even countries apply when borrowing money from institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.
