Kenya could face dare economic storm in 2018 in the aftermath of its twice disputed presidential elections.
Kenya now risks missing the government’s projection of 6 percent growth in the economy come 2018, according to top lenders as the East African country is saddled with the triple threat of austerity measures to pay for those votes, slowing credit growth and new accounting rules for banks.
Nairobi-based Stanbic Bank Kenya Ltd and Investec Bank Ltd. strategist, Chris Becker, says expansion could slow to as little as 1 percent.
“With growing headwinds, there is no longer any room for complacency,” said Ronak Gopaldas, an independent analyst, formerly at FirstRand Ltd.’s investment banking unit in Johannesburg.
The new administration should “refocus its attention to the economy, which has been on the back-burner for the better part of the year,” he said.
The country’s Treasury has already cut this year’s growth target to 5 percent from 5.9 percent as the protracted election furor damped investment and a drought curbed farm output.
Now key indicators for East Africa’s largest economy, the regional hub for multinationals including IBM Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., are flashing warnings signs, with the latest Purchasing Managers’ Index, a measure of private-sector activity, falling to a record low and bank loans growing the slowest in more than a decade.
After a court annulled an Aug. 8 election, Kenya held a rerun of the vote on Oct. 26, that was boycotted by the main opposition coalition. President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party also won the second ballot, which is now being challenged in the Supreme Court.
The nation’s 2.6 trillion-shilling ($25.1 billion) budget was amended to include “austerity measures” for the current fiscal year to accommodate unplanned expenditures such as the rerun of the election, Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich said in September. The Treasury has revised its 2017-18 budget deficit forecast to 8.5 percent of gross domestic product from 6.8 percent. The government recorded a 9.2 percent shortfall in year through June 2017.
Any reduction in government spending is likely to stunt growth, unless alternative sources of investment are found, said David Willacy, a foreign-exchange trader at London-based INTL FCStone Ltd. in London. Investors “are already weary of the country’s economy after the disastrous presidential election, which is still open to further turmoil,” he said.
The country’s Treasury has already cut this year’s growth target to 5 percent from 5.9 percent as the protracted election furor damped investment and a drought curbed farm output.
Now key indicators for East Africa’s largest economy, the regional hub for multinationals including IBM Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., are flashing warnings signs, with the latest Purchasing Managers’ Index, a measure of private-sector activity, falling to a record low and bank loans growing the slowest in more than a decade.
After a court annulled an Aug. 8 election, Kenya held a rerun of the vote on Oct. 26, that was boycotted by the main opposition coalition. President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party also won the second ballot, which is now being challenged in the Supreme Court.
The nation’s 2.6 trillion-shilling ($25.1 billion) budget was amended to include “austerity measures” for the current fiscal year to accommodate unplanned expenditures such as the rerun of the election, Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich said in September. The Treasury has revised its 2017-18 budget deficit forecast to 8.5 percent of gross domestic product from 6.8 percent. The government recorded a 9.2 percent shortfall in year through June 2017.
Any reduction in government spending is likely to stunt growth, unless alternative sources of investment are found, said David Willacy, a foreign-exchange trader at London-based INTL FCStone Ltd. in London. Investors “are already weary of the country’s economy after the disastrous presidential election, which is still open to further turmoil,” he said.
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