BY VICTOR ADAR Lots of things are happening in town with a spot check revealing how most businesses are proceeding to set up base in leafy suburbs as opposed to staying in CBD offices. What is seen fuelling the move is traffic congestion, which in some areas of Nairobi, is severe. As more and more investors opt to move, the race to turn in cash in real estate sector is increasingly gaining momentum so much that according to construction, project and development management firm, Mentor Management (MML), the boom in completions this year as far as office space is concerned,…
Author: Editor
By Kosta Kioleoglou Just a few days ago, the Kenya Bankers Association released the House Price Index for the first quarter of 2016. The 1.4 % increase of the index presented reflected an uptick in house prices during the first quarter of 2016, with the movement representing a not very promising future for the country’s most popular sector of the economy. The 1.4% increase on the period of the first quarter is following 3 years of very mild price changes. This is confirmed by the evolution of the KBA-HPI, which as at the end of the first quarter of 2016,…
Data from Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) shows that Africa’s traffic growth has outperformed its total growth globally. In the year to date, total message traffic volumes grew by 12.8% versus 5.4% growth for SWIFT worldwide, illustrating that Africa plays an increasingly important role in SWIFT’s global business. Levels of growth were also significantly higher than in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at 3.2% and the Americas at 6.7%, and closely behind Asia Pacific at 15%. This growth is underpinned by a significant increase in securities and treasury traffic; securities rose by 15.6% while treasury traffic increased…
BY LUKE MULUNDA The recent shut-down of Chase Bank has raised more questions than answers about the banking industry, placed a brighter spotlight on the role of external auditors and, most importantly, indicted regulators such as Central bank of Kenya and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA). External auditors are doing a major disservice to shareholders and depositors by approving bad books or helping in cooking accounts. In this case Deloitte, especially comes into sharp focus, having also been the auditors of the distressed National Bank of Kenya. These watchdogs are no longer the shareholders’ eye when it comes to checking…
BY LEONARD WANYAMA Sometime in the early heady days of implementing county governments, Machakos County held a spectacular investment conference that wowed the country. The Governor, Dr Alfred Mutua, presented an ambitious strategic plan that morphed into a Maendeleo Chap Chap (Rapid Development) political campaign. However, his aspirations are today increasingly tainted by the imagery of stalled or failed projects that has been dubbed Maendeleo Chafu Chafu (Dirty Development) on social media. The hallmark of that function was the hosting of over 1000 foreign Asian and European investors to whom Dr Mutua promised: business facilitation in the form of one…
By Kevin Gikonyo “You are the weakest link, Good bye!” – the last words to a failed contestant by Anne Robinson in the award winning British game show that is popular all over the world, casted by BBE entertainment known as The Weakest Link. Do not fret if you are not familiar with this, it took many years to sail the English men to the shores at the coast of Mombasa and today some Kenyans speak and write better English than its natives. Like the source of where many words in the English dictionary emanate, so is the new colloquial…
BY FRANCIS MONYANGO Today’s businesses have learnt that life and death are a click away. Whatever you say online will be used against you in the court of public opinion. Philippines boxing champion Manny Pacqiao learnt this lesson the hard way after his ratings dropped following a homophobic tweet which he had posted. His mistake cost him an endorsement contract with Nike. When Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) Governor Patrick Njoroge placed Chase Bank under receivership after it faced liquidity problems, he cited inaccurate social media reports as one of the causes of the bank run that led to panic…
By Shadrack Muyesu Democracy is a better consolidator of industrialization and a very poor catalyst to such industrialization. In reverse, autocracy is a better catalyst of industrialization and a very poor consolidator of it. Far East regimes such as South Korea are deemed to have developed due to their dictator’s policy choices yet the invocation of such remains impossible with the continued presence of the Constitution. Having started out on the same platform, we suddenly find ourselves more than fifty close years behind the east. Pointedly, our mercantilist policies are to blame with the biggest symptom undoubtedly being the land…
BY JANE WACHIRA There are two seasons in the political calendar, the tax season where your nations’ leaders rob you blind for their own amusements and unending sloth, and the election season, a shameful time where your nations’ leaders offer you empty promises and platitudes in exchange for your votes and your hard earned cash – Sally Langston, Scandal US Taxpayer’s money is a song that has been sung for days unending in our country. Not as praise for the good use taxpayers’ money has been put into but because of the misuse and all the illegal activities it has…
By Victor Adar It was pure joy last month when Simon Wafubwa walked into a roomful of over 300 participants, from Government officials to industry stakeholders, during the launch of Enwealth Financial Services at Crown Plaza Hotel in Nairobi. The born again chief executive whose academic background is BSC (Mathematics) with specialty in Actuarial Science, and MBA in Strategic Management, puts up strong arguments on the retirement benefits industry assets thanks to tremendous growth from Sh50 billion in 2000 to Sh814 billion in 2015. He is fastidiously glad that the industry will hit the projected Sh1 trillion mark by end…