Jubilee’s Borrowing Appetite Hits Peak, World Bank And IMF Top Lenders

Kenya’s roaring borrowing and begging appetite continues to balloon even as President Uhuru Kenyatta plans to exit office this year. Recent stats show that the country has been surviving on external debts with both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund being top lenders.

Initially, China was the top lender to Kenya with the majority of loans being invested in infrastructure projects. But in recent months, the World Bank and IMF have stepped up to overtake China. Ironically, the same two entities are warning Kenya about the ballooning debt.

Data from the National Treasury show World Bank’s total lending rose by 517 billion shillings from June 2019 to 1.125 trillion shillings in December. The bulk of the loans from the World Bank came into the country when the effects of Covid-19 had reached their peak.

The IMF lending grew from 158.5 billion shillings to 207.5 billion shillings in the same period while Chinese loans increased by 125 billion shillings to 786 billion shillings. Beijing became the largest bilateral creditor after its loans to Kenya grew from 63 billion shillings to 478 shillings billion 9 years ago.

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Currently, the World Bank loans are now more than all of Kenya’s bilateral loans combined, which stand at 1.09 trillion shillings from countries like China, Belgium, the US, France, Japan, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Finland, and Denmark.

As of July 2021, the bilateral debt service for Kenya was from Abudhabi, Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and the United States of America as shown in the table below:

As Kenya’s debt continues to rise, so is the cost of food. In just five years has increased by 56 percent and the price of cooking gas by 167 percent from 600 shillings to 1600. the price of maize flour (2 kilograms) has increased by 80 percent from 90 shillings to 160 shillings and the price of wheat flour up by 70 percent from 100 shillings to 170 shillings.

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