Kenya economy to grow by 5.5% in 2024, Treasury CS Ndung’u says

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u now says the country’s economy is growing at a stable rate, revealing that it is expected to rise by 5.5% in the 2024/2025 financial year.

CS Ndung’u, who spoke while reading the country’s budget in Parliament on Thursday, said the growth will be as a result of policies implemented by the government under the Bottom-up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA).

“Considering the on-going reforms and additional measures the government is introducing through this Budget Statement, we project our economy to grow by 5.5% in 2024 and 2025,” he said.

“This strong growth will be supported by ongoing interventions under the BETA. In this regard, the government will accelerate investments in human capital development and capital accumulation, market development, protection and regulation, domestic resource mobilization,  reforming and restructuring of government institutions, and digitization to usher an era of efficiency in economic management to support economic recovery.”

The Treasury boss noted that the economic growth was at 5.6% in 2023, having risen from 4.9% in 2022 having been supported by a rebound in agriculture, information and communication, transportation, insurance, real estate, as well as food service activities.

He went ahead to state that the economy will over the next year remain vibrant, majorly due to a decline in the global commodity prices that is expected to reduce the cost of production.

Ndung’u further stated that the country’s macroeconomic environment is also stable with the inflation rate declining to 5.1 percent in May 2024 and 5.0 percent in April 2024 from a peak of 9.6 percent in October 2022.

“The decline was largely driven by the easing of food and energy prices, pass-through effects of exchange rate appreciation, the impact of monetary policy tightening and Government interventions aimed at lowering the cost of production,” he stated.