The government will prioritise tackling the growing public debt while also protecting the fragile economy in the 2024/25 financial year budget.
Treasury cabinet secretary Njuguna Ndung’u, in a statement released on Thursday June 13, 2024 ahead of the budget reading in Parliament, said that the focus will be on economic recovery.
The CS further added that the new budget will also prioritise debt repayment through the generation of additional revenues.
Kenya’s debt currently stands at about 60% of the Gross Domestic Product for the 2023/24 financial year, and is expected to fall to about 64.8% of GDP in 2024/25 financial year, according to the World Bank.
“The budget today is going to emphasise on the policies that we need to strengthen to implement … to support that fragile growth, that fragile economic recovery,” Ndung’u said.
“We want to make sure that we revive the economy so that it can generate jobs for the youth. We want to revive the economy so that we can pay our debt. We have been buffeted by that,” he added.
Earlier this year in February, the Treasury projected that the country’s economic growth is set to increase to about 5.5% this year from 5.6% in 2023.
This growth, the Treasury said, was pegged on programmes and policies initiated by the government to spur economic recovery, including investments in agriculture, manufacturing among other sectors.
Meanwhile, the country’s total public debt currently stands at about 68% of GDP for the 2023/24 financial year, and is expected to fall to 64.8% in 2024/25, according to the World Bank.
Kenya, had in February this year, sold a $1.5 billion international bond at premium to fund the buyback of a large portion of a $2 billion bond maturing in June.
Parliament had last week approved the country’s overall spending for the next financial year to about Sh4 trillion. The 2024/25 budget will be accompanied by the Finance Bill 2024.
