INTERNATIONAL - Kenya will reduce its borrowing from capital markets in the next three years to make its repayments schedule more bearable, a senior Treasury official said on Monday.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government has been criticised for ramping up borrowing since coming to power in 2013. Total public debt stands at about 55 percent of GDP, up from 42 percent when he took over.
The critics accuse the government of saddling future generations with too much debt. The government has defended the higher borrowing, saying it is required to fund infrastructure.
The debt load consists of several Eurobonds issued since 2014 as well as syndicated loans taken out from an array of lenders.
“We need to focus more on concessional borrowing... what we are doing is looking at scaling down our commercial borrowing up to a point where it is manageable,” Geoffrey Mwau, the economics adviser to the finance minister, told reporters.