Kenya's internal debt drifts to 20 bln USD on intense borrowing

Kenya's domestic debt rose by 1.1 billion U.S. dollars in two months, gravitating closer to 20 billion U.S. dollars as the government intensifies domestic borrowing ahead of the close of the fiscal year.

Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) data indicated Tuesday that East African nation's domestic debt currently stands at 19.4 billion U.S. dollars, a considerable rise since the start of February when it stood at 18.3 billion dollars.

The debt has been accelerated by increased uptake of mainly Treasury bonds in the last two months, which now constitute of 68 percent of the total domestic debt, according to the apex bank.

As at February, the value of domestic debt held in Treasury bonds stood at 11.8 billion dollars rising to 12.8 billion dollars at the end of last week.

The data shows a rapid progression of the debt held in Treasury bonds as CBK continued to float the papers monthly.

Last month, Kenya raised 318 million dollars from two ten-year bonds worth 291 million dollars it floated to cover end of fiscal year deficit.

The bonds were massively oversubscribed, with data from the CBK indicating a high appetite from investors, in particular commercial banks.

And in February and March, Kenya put up for sale Treasury bonds worth 291 million dollars with investors bidding massively for the papers.

After the sale of the bonds, the CBK went back to the debt market in tap sales seeking up to 233 million dollars in the auctions.

Kenya again put up for sale mobile-phone based bonds worth 1.5 million dollars which were traded via the gadgets in a first. The securities are currently being traded at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

However, besides the T-bonds, uptake of Treasury bills has equally increased with the CBK last week accepting 320 million dollars from the 91-day, 182-day and 364-day bills.

Analysts noted that the government is extensively borrowing from the domestic market to curb budget deficit as the fiscal year ends to avoid the lengthy process in external borrowing.

Kenya has in this fiscal year, 2016/2017 borrowed heavily from internal than external sources despite plans to borrow more from the latter to ease pressure on domestic interest rates.

According to the Central Bank, Kenya has so far borrowed 2.3 billion dollars locally this financial year against a target of 1.7 billion dollars, with overall public debt totaling 39 billion dollars. Endit