Nairobi, KENYA
Kenya is in advanced talks with the World
Bank for “a fairly priced” loan of up to 100 billion shillings ($991.57
million), nearly half of its required external funding this fiscal year, a
senior Treasury official said on Friday.
The
East African nation wants to cut debt from overseas capital markets, after a
borrowing binge in recent years, including Eurobond offerings, a package of
Chinese loans and syndicated commercial loans.
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
Washington D.C.-based financier lent money straight to the Kenyan ministry of
finance for the first time last year, changing past practice where it
channelled cash straight to the projects, bypassing the Treasury.
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 50-100 billion (shillings) depending on what
kind of interest there will be,” he told Reuters.
The
loan will be cheaper than commercial debt, the official said, in line with the
government’s policy of cutting its funding costs.
“It
is very competitive, it is fairly priced,” Muia said, adding it was likely to
be just above the bank’s concessional rate of 200 basis points in interest.
Kenya
became a middle-income country in 2014 after it rebased the economy, meaning it
cannot secure funds from the World Bank at the concessional rates offered to
low-income states.
The
finance ministry has set a budget deficit of 6.3% of GDP for this financial
year to the end of June and Muia said about 213 billion shillings is expected
from external sources.
The
balance of the funds will be raised through Kenya’s first sovereign green bond,
he said, with the country taking advantage of next week’s UK-Africa investment
summit in London to gauge investor demand for the potential issue.
“It
is taking shape as we go,” Muia said.
The
Treasury projects that the budget deficit will shrink to 5.7% of GDP in
2020/21. The gap, which peaked at 9.1% of GDP in 2016/17 financial year, is
expected to narrow further to the desired level of 3.3% in 2023/24.
Muia
said he was confident that this year’s deficit will be fully covered through
affordable loans.
“We
are very clear in our minds that we want to keep the cost of debt down.”
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