Ruto races to finish projects as debt transparency casts a long shadow

President William Ruto launches construction of the Rironi-Mau Summit Road on November 28, 2025. [PCS]

With barely a year left in office, President William Ruto is racing to complete a slate of flagship infrastructure projects, from a Sh651 billion railway extension to a Sh45.85 billion stadium.

But auditors and economists are warning that inflated costs and opaque financing arrangements are piling fresh liabilities onto a country already straining under debt.

Ruto declared 2026 the year of “execution at scale,” promising to transform Kenya into a regional transport and investment hub through a National Infrastructure Fund and a Sovereign Wealth Fund.

The projects are welcome, coming at a time when poor roads and patchy power have long throttled growth and frustrated many Kenyans.

But Auditor-General reports, parliamentary testimony and Treasury disclosures show the cost of that ambition is mounting in ways that are difficult for the public to audit.

The most glaring red flag comes from Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu’s review of the Talanta Sports City, a 60,000-seat venue central to Kenya’s co-hosting of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations and other important events.

Her report found the project was contracted at Sh45.85 billion, Sh10.85 billion more than the Sh35 billion the Treasury had approved and that the deal was struck through direct procurement, bypassing competitive tendering required under the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act.

Auditors also warned that delayed payments to the contractor would attract interest at three percentage points above the Central Bank of Kenya’s average lending rate. As of June 2025, the project was 44.54 per cent complete, but only Sh2 billion, 4.5 per cent of the contract value, had been paid.

Sports Cabinet Secretary Salim Mvurya has defended the cost increase, telling Senators the initial Sh35 billion estimate was a concept design that excluded VAT, withholding tax, freight and clearing charges.

He maintained that direct procurement was justified by AFCON timelines and that all approvals, including the Attorney-General’s, were obtained. The Auditor-General has recommended a special audit to determine value for money.

The government has not published a consolidated public statement of all securitised revenues, contingent liabilities, and project costs.

The Naivasha–Kisumu–Malaba Standard Gauge Railway, launched by Ruto in March 2026, also illustrates both the ambition and the accounting opacity at the heart of the infrastructure push, auditors say.

The Treasury revised the cost estimate to Sh651 billion in October 2026, a 29.4 per cent increase, or Sh148 billion, from the Sh502.9 billion published a year earlier.

About 95 per cent, or Sh618.8 billion, is expected from external financing, but the government has not identified confirmed commitments covering the full amount.

The figures have not been reconciled in public documents.

A construction contract awarded to China Communications Construction Company and China Road and Bridge Corporation was reported by the government’s own advertising agency in July 2026 at Sh700 billion, Sh49 billion higher than the Treasury’s revised estimate. Neither the National Treasury nor Kenya Railways has publicly explained the difference.

Financing is being pursued through securitisation of the Railway Development Levy, which generates about Sh50 billion annually.

Main civil works from Naivasha had yet to begin as of October 2026 owing to outstanding land acquisition. The government has set aside Sh25 billion to compensate landowners, and residents in Nyamira, Bomet and Kericho have protested against contractors entering their land before compensation was paid, according to local media reports.

The fuel levy is the biggest of the government’s securitisation schemes. Kenya Roads Board has pledged Sh7 of every Sh25 collected per litre of fuel to raise Sh175 billion for road contractor arrears, a programme the government says has restarted more than 580 stalled projects.

The International Monetary Fund has said such arrangements should be classified as sovereign debt under international statistical standards, a position Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has resisted.

The IMF estimates Kenya has raised at least Sh335 billion by leveraging future tax flows across four projects: the sports levy, the fuel tax, import duty for the SGR, and a passenger tax for the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

The Auditor-General has separately found that Sh7.3 billion from the securitised Road Maintenance Levy Fund was irregularly used to compensate a French consortium after the government cancelled the Nairobi–Nakuru–Mau Summit highway contract.

The fund was intended to settle verified pending bills owed to road contractors, not to pay termination compensation.

The Rironi–Mau Summit highway, a 175-kilometre corridor linking Nairobi to Nakuru and beyond, is the direct link between the fuel levy dispute and Ruto’s broader infrastructure architecture.

The French consortium originally awarded the concession was terminated after Treasury concluded the deal would have required Sh299 billion in service fees over 13 years.

The project was then handed to Chinese contractors under a 28-year concession, with the government entitled to 60 per cent of returns above an agreed equity return threshold.

Work on the ground is visibly advanced. Roads Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir said in September (last month) that the Rironi–Naivasha section would be completed and opened to traffic by October 30.

“By October 30 this year, from Rironi to Naivasha, we will have completed the dualling, and people will be able to pass smoothly. There will be no more traffic on that route,” Chirchir said. He later confirmed that the wider corridor would be complete by June 2027.

The tolling framework has drawn opposition.  KeNHA announced that motorists would pay Sh8 per kilometre over a 30-year concession, with the rate rising to Sh8.50 per kilometre between Naivasha and Mau Summit.

The Motorists Association of Kenya filed a petition at the High Court in Nakuru challenging the concession and tolling of the highway, arguing that privatising a road built on public land and funded through taxpayer money amounts to double taxation.

The government’s position is that the toll is necessary to recover the investment. KeNHA has said that alternative roads will be identified for motorists who do not wish to pay the toll, and that rates will be regulated to ensure affordability and transparency.

The Roads Principal Secretary Joseph Mbugua told Parliament that the fuel levy securitisation had brought the Rironi–Mau Summit highway “back on track.”

The Treasury’s Sh4.8 trillion budget for 2026/27 carries a Sh1.1 trillion deficit, financed through domestic borrowing and grants. Public debt surpassed Sh13 trillion as of the latest parliamentary records, close to 70 per cent of GDP.

"We are at a point where we have already borrowed a lot. The impact is that up to 71 per cent of the revenues we collect goes to loan repayment. So when that happens, it leaves us with 29 per cent to cover the rest of the expenditure we would like to do, and that involves both recurrent and development," Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang'o told the National Assembly's Public Petitions Committee on July 28.

That squeeze is the backdrop to the securitisation dispute, whether billions in future tax revenues pledged to infrastructure should be counted as debt, or treated as off-balance-sheet financing.

The securitisation dispute matters because it determines whether billions in future tax revenues are counted as debt, according to the Auditor General.

Mbadi’s position is that once the State transfers revenue rights to a special purpose vehicle, the government carries no residual risk. The IMF disagrees, which has hurt negotiations for a new lending programme, with fresh talks slated for December.

For Ruto, the infrastructure push is both an economic and a political project, analysts say. The AFCON co-hosting and the SGR extension to the Ugandan border offer visible, ribbon-cutting moments.

The documentary record shows projects with compressed delivery schedules and financing structures that the Auditor-General has flagged as difficult to audit.

The question, as Ruto enters his final year, is whether the way Kenya’s infrastructure is being built and financed will leave the country with assets or liabilities when he leaves office, analysts say.