NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 28 – OVER 4 million Fuliza defaulters will be removed from the Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) and other blacklists from November this year, the government and lenders have announced.
The announcement was made by President William Ruto when he met officials from Treasury, Central Bank, Safaricom, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) and NCBA.
Ruto said the lenders have now agreed to develop a new credit as opposed to blacklisting customers.
“I am very happy that between 4 to 5 million Kenyans will, by the beginning of November. be out of the CRB blacklist,” President Ruto stated, “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.”
President Ruto lauded the move saying it will give the listed Kenyans a fresh opportunity to access credit and put end to exploitation from what he described as “predatory lenders”
Anyone listed on CRB is barred from formal borrowing.
During his campaigns ahead of the August election, President Ruto had pledged to review credit listing to open up access to credit for people barred from borrowing over the negative listing.
Ruto said that he supports CRB as a method of instilling financial discipline amongst borrowers but must not criminalise customers.
“What we are asking is we don’t want credit listing to be an all or nothing, in or out engagement, we want credit listing to be a facility that gives everybody a chance to do their best in their own time,” he said.
The Head of State however, proposed changing the credit scoring mechanism to give everybody a chance to access credit.
“Instead of blacklisting we can have a graduated mechanism that allocates rating on every citizen that is borrowing,” he said.
He added that listing of Kenyans has affected some of them in many ways including while seeking employment.
Ruto further lauded the move by Safaricom, Kenya Commercial Bank, and NCBA Bank to revamp the Fuliza loan product saying it is a step in the right direction.
President Ruto said that the move will play a critical role in the financial inclusion of low-income earners.
“I appreciate that today we are having a conversation about hustlers, this is very important to me… I’m confident that walking this journey in the direction you have started, we will get to the correct destination,” President Ruto said.
The Head of State said that his administration is committed to re-engineering the fintech space to come up with credit facilities to support especially the micro, small and medium enterprises.
“That is the space where we have the largest opportunity. That is the space that employs almost 80 per cent of our population and yet they are constrained by access to credit,” he said.
About The Author
