FILE PHOTO: A motorist drives on the controlled section during the construction of the Nairobi Expressway, undertaken by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis, along Uhuru highway in Nairobi, Kenya August 5, 2021. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
December 31, 2021
By George Obulutsa
NAIROBI (Reuters) -Kenya’s economy grew 9.9% year-on-year in the third quarter of this year as it rebounded from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Finance Minister Ukur Yatani said on Friday.
“Economic recovery from the effects of COVID-19 pandemic continued in the third quarter of 2021 as a result of easing of containment measures,” Yatani said on his Twitter account.
“This follows an earlier impressive second quarter performance of 10.1% of real GDP growth …”
Yatani did not give a comparative growth figure for the third quarter of 2020, or how various sectors performed.
Data released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in late January showed Kenya’s economy shrank 1.1% year-on-year in third quarter 2020, largely hurt by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic slashing tourist flows into the country.
The finance ministry forecasts economic growth of 5.9% in full year 2021, Yatani said in a Dec. 2 letter to the International Monetary Fund, just shaving off its earlier 6% growth forecast.
In late October, President Uhuru Kenyatta scrapped a night-time curfew that had been in place since March 2020, a move that was expected to help reinvigorate the economy.
(Reporting by George Obulutsa;Editing by Alison Williams, William Maclean)
