(Bloomberg) -- Kenya is said to plan to sell $2 billion of Eurobonds in the first half of this year, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Proceeds to refinance $750 million of Eurobonds maturing in June, and fund part of the East African nation's 2018-19 budget, according to the people who asked not to be named because the planned sale is not yet public.
- The government is seeking to plug a budget deficit that will probably expand to 6.3 percent of gross domestic product this year. President Uhuru Kenyatta pledged to raise investments in infrastructure and increase the economy's annual expansion rate to 6.1 percent from under 6 percent last year.
- The government is looking for managers for the transaction, Geoffrey Mwau, director general for budget, fiscal and economic affairs at the National Treasury, said in an interview Friday. He declined to comment on the size of the planned issuance or its timing.
- The government set out to borrow 299 billion shillings ($3 billion) in foreign commercial debt in the year through June, and has already contracted lenders to arrange a $1 billion syndicated loan. “Based on that, the Eurobond can only be $2 billion,” said Churchill Ogutu, a fixed-income analyst at Nairobi-based Genghis Capital.
To contact the reporter on this story: Adelaide Changole in Nairobi at achangole2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net, David Malingha, Ana Monteiro
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