Oliver Mathenge
12 July 2009
Nairobi — Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is in Washington for a series of meetings with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank starting Monday.
The Finance minister is leading a Kenyan delegation for meetings with World Bank President Robert Zoelick and IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
During the meetings, Mr Kenyatta will put forward Kenya's plan to quadruple borrowing to $1 billion (Sh80 billion) annually from 2010 to fund transport and energy projects.
Power production
To illustrate the enormity of the task, the government is singling out the energy sector where it aims to boost power production capacity to 3,000 Mega Watts in three years from the current 1,200 at a cost of $80 billion.In this year's Sh867 billion Budget read on June 11 and which has a Sh109 billion deficit, Mr Kenyatta increased development expenditure by 82.6 per cent to Sh258.9 billion up from Sh141.8 billion in the 2008/09 fiscal year.Most of the funds are earmarked for infrastructure development with the road sector taking Sh50.5 billion followed by Sh30.6 billion for energy and Sh24.7 billion to be spend on water and irrigation.Not enoughThe government is telling the donors that it is not getting enough to fund the current infrastructure strategy and to increase power generation. It is, therefore, seeking to agree on a broad framework with the World Bank and IMF.
The IMF approved a $209 million loan (Sh16 billion) on May 29 to boost Kenya's depleted foreign exchange reserves. According to Treasury PS Joseph Kinyua, that amount met the nation's immediate needs and so it will not ask for further emergency funds at the ongoing meetings.Kenya's economy is projected to grow by at least 2.1 per cent this year because of stimulus spending. Economic growth fell to 1.7 per cent last year from 7 per cent in 2007 as post-election violence in the first quarter slowed down activities in tourism, slashed agriculture production and rattled investors.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
