Debt ratio is nothing it all depends on the ability to repay back that's why banks can lend a person earning 200Kp.m can borrow upto 10times his monthly salary while a person earning 10K will be denied a loan of even 5K.Simply put a person earning 10K is spending most of his money to meet his basic needs as compared to a person who earns 200K who has some money to spend on few luxuries

Ghana had a debt ratio of circa 50% but they are in a mess while Japan with 250%(as pointed out at you) are doing fine.

A person with 5K salary will borrow to pay rent and buy food while a person with 200K will mostly likely borrow to enhance his/her earnings and thats what makes the difference.

In Kenya we are borrowing to pay debts, meet recurrent expenditure commitments which means that the country is unable to generate enough money to meet its basic obligations.How does that grow the economy?

Does US, China, Japan borrow to pay its civil servants?

Whether you like it or not the economy is getting bad and it will be bad next year,look at the following

1.Interest rates
2.FX rate
3.Revenue collections
4.NSE
5.T-Bills

Look at how the GoK is desperate

for the sake of sisi, who don't understand much of the gdp stuff.
If borrowing to pay recurrent expenditure is not healthy for the economy, would not borrowing be of any help.

It will mean you lay off workers, close down some institutions to save on say power bills, newspaper bills, tea and mandazi bills - but does'nt that also affect the economy in a negative way, since the milk farmer is not paid, the mandazi lady is not paid, kenya power scales back, those civil servants and their families do not get cash...

I mean what is good at the end of the day, I for sure would rather have a debt and ensure a decent life for my family than live a miserable life without debts.

Interesting how Kenyans don't seem to be concerned about the massive corruption and wastage of public funds in our counties. Sasa how can we talk of kicking out the Jubilee govt na tumeshindwa na MCA's and Governors.

In 2013/14 the National government disbursed a total of 210b to the 47 Counties, this allocation is equivalent to the total tax revenues that KRA had collected in 2004 to run the whole country.

They have good advisers. But they are not listening.
I saw Njiraini was summoned by UK to statehouse to explain why they are not collecting enough money/taxes. How about spending the money they already have prudently? They are behaving like teens who spend school fees money on chips and chicken at KFC.