In bid to boost the Kenya reserves and help with its finances, the International Monetary Fund agreed to lend Kenya about $447 million.
The money includes an augmentation of about $216 million and brings the cumulative disbursements to Kenya under existing arrangements to about $2.4 billion, the Washington-based lender said in a statement Monday after the executive board completed a review of its loan programs.
The funds will be for addressing debt vulnerabilities, supporting the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and global shocks, and to enhance governance and broader economic reforms, the IMF said. While the East African nation’s economy remains resilient, “downside risks predominate in the near term,” it read.
The funds will help President William Ruto’s plan to urgently improve the nation’s fiscal position in a bid to avoid the economic crises that befell emerging and frontier markets this year, such as Ghana and Sri Lanka.
The president is targeting nearly tripling annual tax collections to 5 trillion shillings ($41 billion) in five years to ease the financial burden on a nation that currently spends more than half of its tax revenue on servicing liabilities, he said in an interview on Friday.
