IMF, Kenya reach staff level agreement on lending programme
3:23 pm Tuesday, November 08th, 2022
NAIROBI (Reuters) -The International Monetary Fund and Kenya have reached a staff-level agreement after its fourth review of its lending programme, the fund said on Tuesday.
The IMF said in a statement that under the review of Kenya’s Extended Fund Facility and Extended Credit Facility, the east African economy would have access to about $433 million in financing once the IMF Executive Board formally finishes the review.
The IMF review is the first since President William Ruto took office in September, and Finance Minister Njuguna Ndung’u took office a month later.
IMF said it forecast the economy will expand 5.3% this year, with policy tightening in the country and a slowdown globally expected to put a damper on growth next year.
“Continued vigilance and responsiveness to changing external conditions will alongside exchange rate flexibility be important given the unsettled global environment,” the fund said.
It added the government was drafting a supplementary budget for the 2022/23 fiscal year that aimed to cut spending and bring the deficit to below the projected 5.9% of gross domestic product and direct funds towards tackling the effects of drought.
Ruto’s government faces a very narrow fiscal space for its policies, after his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta increased public borrowing to fund infrastructure projects.
(Reporting by George ObulutsaEditing by Chris Reese and Tomasz Janowski)
