Kenya is set to borrow up to $2.8 billion (Ksh287 billion) in Eurobonds offers and syndicated loan this year alone, to finance the 2018/2019 budget.
According Treasury PS Kamau Thuge who spoke to the Bloomberg, the government is seeking to raise Ksh37 billion from commercial debt and a further Ksh250 billion from Eurobonds.
This will be the government’s third Eurobond.
Kenya sold the first Eurobond worth $2.75 billion (Ksh275 billion) in 2014 before issuing a second one, worth $2 billion (Ksh200 billion) of 10- and 30-year Eurobonds in February.
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The International Monetary Fund estimates Kenya’s total public debt will peak at 63.2 percent of gross domestic product this year from 58 percent in 2017.
According to the latest Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) report for Africa, Kenya’s debt woes and miss-match between expenditure and revenue collection remain big concerns.
“The size of total government expenditure relative to GDP climbed nearly four percentage points between 2001/12 and 2016/17, reflecting the growing importance of the public sector in the Kenyan economy and in underpinning growth,” stated the Word Bank in a report.
The World Bank further stated that Kenya’s score on the sub-cluster of debt management declined by 0.5 to 4.0 last year from 4.5 in 2016.
“In Kenya, the score was pulled down by weak capacity of the debt management office of the National Treasury and its inability to follow the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy of 2017-2020,” the report states.
The Government published the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy for 2017/2018 to 2019/2020 in November 2016.
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“Although on paper the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy provides a framework for prudent debt management, it is not clear that it is being followed, considering the sovereign debt trajectory that has kept increasing at a sustained pace over the past years,” added World Bank.
Currently, Kenya has a total public debt of Ksh5 trillion, and it is estimated that by the end of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s term in 2022 Kenya will owe debtors Ksh7 trillion.
Experts have warned that Kenya is accruing a debt that her economy is not capable of repaying.
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