Kenya is looking for long-term financing from International Monetary Fund to bolster economic resilience and mitigate balance of payments challenges.
A country’s access to the Resilience and Sustainability Facility is capped at 150 percent of its quota or the equivalent of a billion Special Drawing Rights, whichever is lower.
This implies that should Kenya secure financing through this window, it will be eligible to receive up to USD 1.1 billion, or just about Kshs 150.1 billion at the present exchange rate, in fresh funding from the IMF.
Disbursements from the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Facility typically have a 20-year repayment period and a 10.5-year grace period during which no principal is repaid.
Read: Kenya Not at Risk of Defaulting On Eurobond – IMF Director
To be eligible for financing under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility, a country needs to be having a concurrent IMF supported programme such as the ongoing 38 months USD 2.4 billion programme Kenya has under the fund’s Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility arrangements.
The IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, says that her meeting with President William Ruto and members of the Cabinet during her visit last week was focused on the country’s inability to access the global financial markets owing to the prevailing tightened conditions.
Kenya has been experiencing economic shocks over the recent past. This has been as a result of Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, surging inflation, high interest rates. This situation requires interventions from monetary funds such as IMF.
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