https://www.standardmedi...an-deal-with-four-banks[/quote]


The government picked Standard Chartered, Standard Bank, Citi and Rand Merchant Bank to lead the loan back in January.


No local bank involved

Treasury plans more loans to clear maturing debt this year


The Treasury has signalled it will borrow afresh to retire maturing debt — including an expensive syndicated loan — which fall due in the course of this year.

Treasury Bonds totalling Sh63.1 billion, as well as a two-year $750 million (Sh75 billion) syndicated loan taken in 2015, mature this year.

Principal Secretary Kamau Thugge termed as “normal” the strategy of borrowing to repay dues, and ruled out the possibility of a government cash crunch due to debt servicing pressures amid competing budgetary requirements.

“This is normal. This is how countries operate, you roll over maturing debt. That is how liability management works,” Dr Thugge said at a budget forum. “We don’t see a cash crunch this year.”

Kenya has previously borrowed to settle a syndicated loan that was falling due and some T-Bonds have recently been re-opened to raise cash for redemptions.

The first use of the $2.75 billion (Sh275 billion) raised through a Eurobond floated in 2014 was to retire a costly $604.5 million syndicated loan Kenya had borrowed from commercial banks in 2012.

The other syndicated loan falls due in October and was borrowed at an interest rate of eight per cent per annum. It was taken at the height of a government cash crunch in 2015. The loan was arranged by Citigroup, Standard Bank and StanChart.

The fixed-income securities about to fall due are listed on the Nairobi bourse and are all on fixed coupon rates.

First in the queue is a Sh31.07 billion five-year bond, which matures on May 28, priced at 11.855 per cent.

A two-year Sh18.7 billion T-bond matures on June 26 and has a yield of 12.629 per cent, and an 11-year bond of Sh4 billion with a rate of 13.75 per cent needs to be repaid on September 11. There is also a 10-year Sh9.3 bond with a coupon rate of 10.75 per cent that falls due October 16.

The fiscal deficit in the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 2017 is about Sh523 billion, and the Treasury says this will be equally funded through domestic and external borrowing.

http://www.nation.co.ke/...84068-wx40mlz/index.html

Reality checks in. After giving rosy forecasts for a long time despite evidence to the contrary, a couple more downgrades are coming up. That 5.5% is still pie in the sky stuff.

Kenya spent some borrowed money on wages and salaries, says World Bank

The World Bank (WB) has fired a warning shot at the Government for using debt to settle recurrent expenditure. In a new report on the state of the Kenyan economy, the global lender says it has noted with concern that Kenya is borrowing more than it is spending on development projects, meaning that the money is being used on wages and for purchasing goods and services. “Overall borrowing in 2015/16 outstripped development spending by 0.1 percentage points, suggesting a small part of the borrowing financed part of the recurrent spending,” said the bank in its latest edition of Kenya Economic Update. Last year, the National Treasury planned to borrow Sh700 billion while the development budget was estimated at Sh682 billion. WB says this is an indication that the Government is going against a legal requirement that debt be used solely for financing investments.

https://www.standardmedi...salaries-says-world-bank

Seconded. Were it not for GOK binge borrowing, things could be even better.