Kenya in talks with World Bank for Sh100 billion loanKenya is in advanced talks with the World Bank for “a fairly priced” loan of up to Sh100 billion ($991.57 million), nearly half of its required external funding this fiscal year, a senior Treasury official said on Friday. The World Bank, which has multiple development funding programs with Kenya worth billions of dollars, is seen as one of the viable alternatives to commercial debt. The size of the loan from the World Bank will be determined by how much its own funders can put together, said Julius Muia, the principal secretary in the ministry of finance. “We are thinking something between Sh50-100 billion depending on what kind of interest there will be,” he told Reuters. The Treasury projects that the budget deficit will shrink to 5.7 per cent of GDP in 2020/21.

Source: Standard Digital January 19, 2020 00:00 UTC