Kenya on the move again as economy reverses 7-straight falls
Wednesday July 05 2023
A fruit seller arranges groceries at his stand in Nyeri County, Kenya on May 3, 2023. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NMG
Kenya’s economy has reversed seven straight back-to-back quarterly growth declines after pulling out of a prolonged electioneering period and a season of jobless growth defined by elevated inflation.
The latest official numbers show that the economy in the three months to March posted the fastest growth in the last four quarters, defying the high cost of living driven by a prolonged drought.
The quarter to March was the first time the economy has put brakes on seven straight declines from a high of 10.3 percent in 2021 to 3.7 percent in December, pointing to glimmers of recovery from post-pandemic global supply disruptions.
Read: Kenya's growth slows to 4.8pc
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) reported on Tuesday that the country’s gross domestic product expanded by 5.3 percent in the first quarter of the year, a faster pace than 3.7 percent in the previous period ending December 2022.
The rate of growth was also higher than the quarter ended September (4.3 percent) and the second quarter of last year (5.2 percent) when the country battled twin shocks of a severe drought and global supply disruptions related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The expansion in economic activity in the January-March 2023 period was, however, slower than 6.2 percent in the same quarter last year before the country started feeling the full impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on global supply chains.
KNBS attributed the performance primarily to “sufficient rainfall”, which lifted farming activities to a growth of 5.8 percent, the first since the last quarter of 2020.
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