By CONSTANT MUNDA
World’s leading banks, consultancies and think-tanks have marginally downgraded Kenya’s growth prospects for 2019, largely citing the dampening impact of prolonged drought in the first quarter of the year.
A consensus growth outlook for August from 14 global firms projects that the country’s economy is likely to expand by 5.6 per cent, 0.2 percentage points lower than last month’s forecast.
“Growth is set to moderate this year, with persistent drought conditions weighing on the agricultural and electricity supply sectors,” researchers at FocusEconomics, a Barcelona-based economic forecast and analysis firm that compiles the global forecast data on sub-Saharan Africa, wrote in this month’s report.
“Meanwhile, the interest rate cap will likely continue constraining the activity of SMEs.”
Gross domestic product (GDP) in the January-March period slowed to 5.6 percent from 6.5 percent a year earlier, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) reported at the end of June…read more>>
