Kenya’s National Treasury has ramped up domestic borrowing after canceling the issuance of 115 billion shillings (about 965 million U.S. dollars) Eurobond on June 10 due to expensive interest rates in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The Treasury announced the issuance of 339 million dollars in Treasury bonds for budgetary support Thursday, a day after seeking to raise 170 million dollars through an infrastructure bond.
“Secondary trading of the bonds at the Nairobi Securities Exchange in multiples of 424 dollars will commence on July 26,” said David Luusa, director of the Financial Markets Department of the Central Bank of Kenya, which is issuing the bonds on behalf of the Treasury.
The two Treasury bonds’ offers are for the first time running concurrently as the government moves to fill a 7.3 billion dollars budget deficit, breaking a long-time tradition of issuing one at a time every month.
Cabinet Secretary of the National Treasury Ukur Yatani said in early June that Kenya would not issue the Eurobond after receiving expensive bids priced at 12 percent.
Domestic debt as of June 17 stood at 36.7 billion dollars, an increase from 31 billion dollars in June 2021, according to the Treasury.
Total public debt stands at 71.3 billion dollars. Enditem
