NAIROBI, April 5 (Xinhua) -- Economic analysts on Thursday projected a positive outlook for Kenya's economy in 2018 citing improved weather conditions.
Nairobi based investment firm Cytonn said Kenya's seven economic indicators had an improvement during the first three months of 2018.
"Following a review of Q1'2018, we maintain a positive outlook for the macro economic environment in Kenya, with better Gross Domestic Product (GDP) prospects relative to 2017, supported by improved weather conditions and a conducive operating environment," said Cytonn in a statement released in Nairobi.
Maurice Oduor, Investment Manager at Cytonn, said that its indicator on government borrowing has moved from negative at the beginning of the year to positive and is expected to stay as such for the rest of the year.
Odour said that at the beginning of the year, the government was behind its domestic borrowing target, having borrowed 75.7 percent of their pro-rated target at the time, and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) was unlikely to meet its collection target due to expected suppressed corporate earnings in 2017.
He noted that currently, the domestic borrowing target has been revised downwards to 2.976 billion U.S. dollars from 4.1 billion dollars and there was a successful two billion dollar Eurobond issue, hence the government borrowing is now ahead of its pro-rated borrowing targets.
He noted that the Kenyan economy is projected to grow by 5.5 percent on average in 2018, according to GDP projections from 13 research houses, global agencies, and government organizations that Cytonn tracked during the quarter.