BY Luke Mulunda To cap or not to cap interest rates? That’s the million-dollar question whose answer depends on where you sit during working hours. Bankers, including the Central Bank of Kenya, for obvious reasons, want the law regulating interest rates repealed. On the other hand, borrowers who include businesses as well as consumer lobbies feel a return to a free market model in the pricing of loans will be punitive. Clearly, the debate on interest rates has become very emotive, and inadvertently betrayed the capitalistic interests behind the renewed push to give banks a free hand in determining the…
Author: NBM CORRESPONDENT
Advances in technology and changing trade patterns are affecting opportunities for export-led manufacturing. Smart automation, advanced robotics and 3-D printing are new factors influencing which locations are attractive for production. While these shifts threaten significant disruptions in future employment, particularly for low-skilled workers, they also offer opportunities, according to a new report released last month by the World Bank Group. The report, Trouble in the Making? The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development, underscores the resulting changes in the manufacturing sector’s ability to create jobs and lift people out of poverty in developing countries. It encourages policymakers to adjust their approach to spurring…
By Kosta Kioleoglou House prices increased by 2.08% during the first half of 2017, according to the latest House Price Index for the second quarter 2017, released last July by the Kenya Bankers Association. This is the result of a downward market trend that started a couple of years ago. The second quarter of 2017 saw the slowest price increase since the third quarter of 2016. While several people read these numbers as a sense of overall price stability, the actual trend over the past four quarters points to the underlying demand and supply characteristics. In particular, it depicts a…
BY ANTONY MUTUNGA Time and again, natural disasters have continued to be a thorn in the flesh humanity, proving the fact that we are truly all subject to Mother Nature. As time goes by, climate change has continued to take place causing natural disasters to increase all over the world. According to the World Bank, these incidents have managed to increase by 30% since the 1960s. Over the years some of the natural disasters that occurred have been so devastating that they have managed to change the planet in one way or another. In 2011, for instance, Japan was hit…
Considering that stretched elections are now a permanent fixture of our Constitution and the fact that the political deadlock Kenya is now witnessing could see the exercise stretch beyond the 60 day period for a repeat exercise contemplated under the Constitution, SHADRACK MUYESU indulges Anzetse Were, Kosta Kioleoglou and Antony Mutunga on what this portends for the economy and some guidance on the way forward. Ms Were is a development economist and a researcher with over ten years of experience working in Africa on development economics, Impact Investment and Enterprise Development. Mr. Kioleoglou is a civil engineer, an expert real…
BY VICTOR ADAR As recent as a year ago, banks charged an average of 18% on loans. Some passed exorbitant percentages of as high as 27% to borrowers. Today, the maximum interest charged by banks is less than 14%, yet bottom up economy is not strong. Experts say that from manufacturing to trade, real estate to transport, as well as agriculture, which are the biggest contributor to Kenya’s economic growth, have not benefited from credit after the country re-introduced interest rate capping law that was scrapped in 1991. Asset management firm, Britam, reveals that the drive to lower interest rate…
BY PETER WANYONYI Back in 1929, at the height of British colonial oppression in Kenya, the Kikuyu Central Association sent Mzee Jomo Kenyatta abroad to lobby for Kikuyu land rights and restitution. It was felt that, given the denial of rights to Black people to express themselves in British colonial Kenya, there was only one place in the world that would tolerate and in fact welcome and embrace the ideals of free speech and open debate to the extent needed to push African land rights to the fore of British colonial debate. That place was, quite ironically, Britain – the…
BY ISAAC SWILA Christened the Enigma in Kenyan politics by Nigerian author Babafemi Badejo in his 2006 biography titled “Raila Odinga”, the son of the doyen of opposition politics seems to feel the sweet aroma of the presidency so closer to his nose yet he fails to have a real bite and taste of the delicacy. At each election cycle beginning with 2007, 2013 and 2017, Raila has come so close yet to so far; and his is a rich narrative that will be written and told for ages for future Kenyan children and students of history. And like a…
BY KENYATTA OTIENO The political heat generated by recent call by NASA Coalition presidential candidate Raila Odinga to the Maasai in Kajiado not to sell their land to outsiders and subsequent commentaries by Kibe Mungai, an advocate of the High Court and social commentator and Dr David Ndii, an economist and NASA’s strategist, has led me to write this article. I have had the privilege to do some work in groundwater across Maasailand. I have been to the east in Rombo near Kilimanjaro where the Maasai border Taitas, Sultan Hamud where they have mixed with Kambas and to Kilgoris in…
Kenya hosted major conferences including TICAD and UNCTAD last year. Given the strategic and geographical location of the country; giving it an edge to host more international conferences, investors mainly hoteliers, have shown business interests mainly aiming at offering visitors an opportunity to enjoy. Things were rosy until politics set in. With the elections in the backdrop this year, the economy has been growing at a slow pace. Despite the setbacks, tourism has been upbeat as international bookings have been steady at 70%, according to Bobby Kamani, MD of Diani Reef. He spoke to Victor Adar on fourth quarter performance…