Kenya in talks with World Bank for Ksh.50-100B loan

Kenya is in advanced talks with the World Bank for “a fairly priced” loan of up to Ksh. 100 billion shillings ($991.57 million).

This is nearly half of its required external funding this fiscal year.

A senior Treasury official said on Friday that the balance of the funds will be raised through Kenya’s first sovereign green bond.

Mr. Julius Muia, Principal Secretary at the National Treasury, said he was confident that this year’s deficit will be covered through affordable loans.

Kenya 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 PS Muia.

“We are thinking something between 50-100 billion (shillings) depending on what kind of interest there will be,” he told Reuters.