What they highlighted - and correctly so - was that Kenya's Chief Executive and his entourage were in the West on a begging mission. So, quite helpfully, they sought to gauge the success of this real mission. 

According to Reuters, Kenya is on the verge of readmission to the good graces of the Bretton Woods institutions following fruitful talks between President Kibaki and the heads of those institutions. 

The International Monetary Fund approved a Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility programme worth $250 million in August 2000, shortly before halting the funding. The World Bank has four programmes in the pipeline worth nearly $300 million. The IMF stopped lending to Kenya at the end of 2000 due to rampant corruption. Shortly afterwards, the World Bank froze budget support, but still gave humanitarian aid. 

The IMF's Horst Kohler told Mr Kibaki that the agreements reached between the IMF team and the Government officials on the resumption of financial support would be tabled before the Fund's board meeting on November 5. Euphoria in Govt circles World Bank President James Wolfensohn was also quoted as saying the Bank had agreed to support Kenya's economic recovery efforts. 

Like all previous financial commitments, these gestures have been greeted with euphoria in Government circles, and with anticipation amongst ordinary Kenyans. 

Indeed, it has become customary in this country for every externally-sourced dollar to be greeted with glee. This, of course, rises from the sad misconception that such "donor funds" are "free money", which is why you will hear uninformed Narc hawks crowing that the Government is succeeding because it is attracting "donor funds". The truth is that these resources are not free. 

While Mr Kohler and Mr Wolfensohn were jazzing Kibaki and his entourage about resumption of financial assistance, the Central Bank of Kenya was releasing its latest statistics on Kenya's public debt burden. 

By June 2003 (close of fiscal year 2002/03), the country's total public debt stock stood at a whopping Sh648.3 billion (or 65.9 per cent of our total national wealth. The external debt accounted for Sh358.9 billion (55.4 per cent) of the total, with domestic debt at Sh289.4 (44.61 per cent). 

In the Monthly Economic Review, CBK notes that the country's debt stock rose by Sh34.6 billion in the last financial year as a result of an increase of Sh53.4 billion in domestic debt, which was partly offset by a drop in the external debt by Sh18.8 billion. During this period, interest on domestic debts alone gobbled up Sh27.6 billion, while servicing the external debt cost the Exchequer a further Sh26.1 billion. 

Right now, if the Sh648.9 billion debt stock was shared equally amongst the 30 million of us, then each Kenyan is indebted to the tune of Sh21,630 - more than 270 times the average Sh80 that 65 per cent of the absolutely poor spend in a day. It is also 10 times the country's minimum wage. 

Servicing this huge public debt has remained the country's most expensive budgetary item for decades, consuming over 30 per cent of the national budget annually. This is more than the annual allocations to the education and health sectors combined. 

Unless something drastic happens in the way we utilise our national resources - both domestically generated and borrowed - it will be difficult to applaud any new lending breakthrough. 

Such "easy credit" from the past has been used to buy lavish presidential jets, construct unnecessary bullet factories, monuments in some park and other white elephants and generally finance Government extravagance - leading to the current situation where our children are saddled with a debt burden equivalent to 66 per cent of the country's total national wealth. 

The reason for my pessimism a rises from the manner in which we have traditionally incurred and spent borrowed resources. For decades now, we have perfected the habit of living beyond our means, worsened by our propensity to borrow to bankroll consumption. Things are bound to get worse And if Narc's first 10 months in power is anything to go by, things are bound to get worse.

Already, this Government has demonstrated that it will not shy away from operating on hefty budgetary deficits. The Mwiraria budget indicated a possible record deficit of Sh117 billion, threatening to escalate the country's debt burden by an unprecedented 10 per cent in a single fiscal year, 

Generous increases in teachers' salaries, higher allowances for MPs, increased councillors' pay packages, financing a plethora of task-forces and the protracted constitutional review conference are all bound to exert immense pressure on the national kitty. 

Governments the world over borrow to finance various programmes. Since the founding of modem statehood, governments have always been the most voracious consumers of credit. So this article is not about sloganeering for "zero-borrowing for Kenya." 

No. That would be economic nonsense. The point I am making is that this country is running on a "deficit" primarily because we live beyond our means. I believe we can borrow but still run this country on a "credit balance sheet." 

We must learn to put to use well resources generated by the citizenry before we rush for credit. Credit - however cheap - always has a price. It makes very poor economics to collect Sh230 billion in taxes, spend the whole of it in six months on fleets of top-of-the-range gas-guzzling mammoths of cars for government functionaries, hardly deserved allowances for brawly MPs, high perks for councillors, commissions to regurgitate what was investigated ten years ago - and then crave for a Sh30 billion credit line from the IMF to survive the next six months! 

Two, we must borrow with utmost caution, and always for development - never for consumption. To institutionalise such measures, we need firm legislative steps that can introduce strict controls in the realm of public debts. 

Mr Namwamba, an advocate, is the Chief Counsel, Chambers of Justice

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