The Africa Development Bank Group (AfDB) has approved 930 million dollars into Kenya’s economy for infrastructure development and enhance job creation for the next five years.
Gabriel Negatu, Regional Director for the AfDB’s Eastern Africa Resource Centre, said on Thursday in Nairobi that the Country Strategy Paper (CSP), which was approved by the board articulates the bank’s priority areas of support to Kenya from 2014-2018.
He said the CSP supports the country’s ambitions and addresses its main developmental challenges by promoting job creation as the overarching objective.
“To achieve our main objective, we have designed the CSP around two main pillars, we will continue to support the government’s effort to enhance physical infrastructure to unleash inclusive growth and secondly, develop skills for the emerging labor market for Kenya’s transforming economy,” he said.
Negatu said it would also explore ways of restructuring poorly performing operations in the portfolio or cancelling them, and redeploying freed-up resources to existing or new investments.
He hinted that the bank also recently revised credit policy for non-concessional borrowing allowing Kenya access to sovereign- guaranteed loans from the bank’s private sector lending window.
Negatu said that the CSP was a continuation of the 2008-2013 CSP that focuses on growth, employment creation and infrastructure development.
He said under the first pillar the AfDB would establish a more conducive environment for the private sector through investments in physical infrastructure.
Negatu said that the bank investments in energy, transport and water would increase access to affordable and reliable electricity, improve transport connectivity, reduce transport cost and time, and enhance access to reliable water supply.
“At enterprise level, this will boost private-sector activity, increase productivity, stimulate structural transformation, and generate employment, thereby promoting gender-balanced inclusiveness,” he said.
He stressed that the bank investments in the energy sector was aimed at reducing the cost of electricity and make supply more reliable and accessible, thereby supporting the MTP II objectives to increase rural and urban access rates by 50 per cent and reduce the cost of electricity by 50 percent by 2018.
Xinhua/NAN
