According to new data revealed by the National Treasury the public debt stock in Kenya has now hit 8.4 trillion Kenyan Shillings from the 8.2 trillion Kenyan Shillings that was the case in December of 2021.
Data from the 2021 to 2022 Quarterly Economic and Budget Review (QEBR) report has revealed that the split stock has now been evenly as 4.2 trillion Kenyan Shillings covers domestic debt and the other 4.2 trillion Kenyan Shillings covers external debt.
A weekly bulletin by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) revealed that the Public Debt for Kenya hit exactly 8.206.74 billion Kenyan Shillings by the end of December 2021 marking a significant increase from the 7.996.30 billion Kenyan Shillings that was the case in September of 2021.
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Banking institutions in Kenya were as at 6th of May 2022, the largest holders of domestic debt in Kenya at 49 percent followed closely by the pension funds with 31.93 percent, Insurance companies with 6.96 percent, Parastatals at 5.78 percent and other bodies holding 6.32 percent of the total domestic debt.
The loans secured from multilateral lenders so far, constitute a total of 1.83 trillion Kenyan Shillings of the total external loans with debts from commercial banks hitting 1.21 trillion Kenyan Shillings.
Regarding domestic debt commercial banks were behind non residents and non banks with a total of 1.98 trillion Kenyan Shillings of the domestic debt stock flowing back to the lenders. The non residents owed a total of 2.12 trillion Kenyan Shillings in outstanding payments.
Although the stock of debts has only grown by 2.4 percent in the first three (3) months of 2022 the gross public debt for Kenya, and the publicly guaranteed debt has increased by 15.1 percent year after year from the 7.3 trillion Kenyan Shillings in March of 2021.
According to reports Kenya’s debt could reach 9 trillion Kenyan Shillings at some point in 2022 due to the country’s continuous dependence on external as well as domestic financing to aid its expenditure.
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Estimates by the National Treasury state that the public debt stock for Kenya could reach 8.6 trillion Kenyan Shillings by the end of June of 2022 before then going higher to even 9.5 trillion Kenyan Shillings by June of 2023. It is expected that the public debt stock for Kenya could reach 11.6 trillion Kenyan Shillings by June of 2026.
With it being aware of the gradually depleting debt ceiling the National Treasury has proposed that the current debt ceiling should be adjusted to cap the debt limit at fifty five 55 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at NPV which is the Net Present Value.
It is believed that the proposal by the National Treasury will be achieved by a number of amendments to the Public Finance Management Act (PFM).
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