NAIROBI, July 9 (Xinhua) \u2014 Global rating agency Moody\u2019s has cut Kenya\u2019s sovereign credit ratings, citing \u201cdiminished capacity to maintain revenue-based fiscal consolidation that would improve debt affordability and place debt on a downward trend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moody\u2019s said the downgrade places Kenya\u2019s foreign-currency long-term issuer ratings and foreign-currency senior unsecured debt ratings to Caa1 from B3, with the country\u2019s outlook remaining negative.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn particular, the government\u2019s decision not to pursue planned tax increases and instead rely on expenditure cuts to reduce fiscal deficit represents a significant policy shift with material implications in Kenya\u2019s fiscal trajectory and financing needs,\u201d Moody\u2019s said in a statement released on Monday evening.<\/p>\n
The statement came after Kenyan President William Ruto was forced to withdraw new taxes in the Finance Bill 2024 following three weeks of public protests.<\/p>\n
The government had sought to raise an additional 346.7 billion Kenyan shillings (about 2.7 billion U.S. dollars) to fund its 31-billion-dollar budget for the financial year 2024\/2025.<\/p>\n
The credit rating agency said it does not expect the government to introduce significant revenue-sharing measures in the foreseeable future, thus expecting Kenya\u2019s fiscal deficit, estimated at 4.66 billion dollars, to narrow slowly, with the country\u2019s debt affordability remaining weaker for long.<\/p>\n
Negative ratings by global credit agencies hurt Kenya\u2019s chances of attracting cheaper loans from the international market, the National Treasury of Kenya noted in a recent report.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s public debt stood at 11.3 trillion shillings (about 88 billion dollars) at the end of March, according to the National Treasury. The institution had targeted to push the fiscal deficit to 3.3 percent of the gross domestic product in the 2024\/2025 fiscal year from 5.7 percent in the financial year 2023\/2024.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIROBI, July 9 (Xinhua) \u2014 Global rating agency Moody\u2019s has cut Kenya\u2019s sovereign credit ratings, citing \u201cdiminished capacity to maintain revenue-based fiscal consolidation that would improve debt affordability and place debt on a downward trend.\u201d Moody\u2019s said the downgrade places Kenya\u2019s foreign-currency long-term issuer ratings and foreign-currency senior unsecured debt ratings to Caa1 from B3, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}