In this big fiscal policy pivot, President William Ruto’s hallmark economic empowerment thing, the Hustler Fund, has been basically gutted of money in the fresh 2026/27 financial year budget estimates that were tabled.
The paperwork shared with Parliament shows the Financial Inclusion Fund gets zero shillings starting next July, and officials say the funding stoppage should still roll into later budget cycles as well.
This move, it looks like, cuts off direct exchequer backing for what has become the administration’s most politically symbolic project. It kicked off with a very large Sh20 billion allocation, and then it slowly, in a way, unraveled over consecutive years.
By June 2025, the government had released only Sh14.8 billion to the micro-credit scheme, which is way below the Sh50 billion total injection the president promised when he took office.
Treasury officials insist the zero-allocation is not the same as abandoning the fund. They say it was set up as a revolving facility, so it could keep going using loan recoveries and related repayments. Still, the timing of the defunding is clashing with tough national budget pressure, rising debt charges, and, frankly, hard-hitting audit questions.
Auditor General Nancy Gathungu recently highlighted troubling gaps in the fund’s credit controls. The audit found that more than 104,000 loans worth about Sh116.5 million were given out to borrowers who did not have their national identity card numbers on record. It also noted that nearly 387,000 loan accounts connected to telecom SIM cards were shut down before full repayment was completed, which makes it even harder for the state to claw back roughly Sh12.5 billion in unpaid defaults.
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