Despite fears of a political crisis being sparked by presidential elections next year, and a its high exposure to the eurozone debt crisis, the Kenyan permanent secretary to the Ministry of Finance, Joseph Kinyua, has maintained that the country's economy is set to remain on a steady path of economic recovery, as the government has made good progress in strengthening its economic and political institutions.

“The Kenyan economy has been resilient in spite of the euro crisis, and we have seen it recover from the crisis,” said Mr Kinyua. “In addition, the country strongly recovered from the domestic crisis of the [2007] election. What is important is we have consolidated the gains that we made on the political side, and we have built a strong base on which we can see ourselves embark on a stronger growth path, in line with our vision for 2013, where we aim to achieve a 10% rate of growth annually.”

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Although Kenya’s GDP growth slowed from 5.6% in 2010 to 4.5% in 2011, according the African Development Bank, due to an unstable macroeconomic environment characterised by rising inflation and high energy costs, Mr Kinyua stressed his confidence that the country’s economy will experience a positive rebound in 2013.

“For the full year of 2013, we expect to grow at a rate closer to 5.5%, and our aim is in the next two to three years to see ourselves back to where we were in 2007, [where we had] a 7% rate of growth," he said. "Ideally [we will need to achieve] 10%, so that we would be able to raise our income per capita to the level where we get out of the low-income country bracket to medium income [bracket].”

In his interview with fDi Magazine at the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings in Japan in October, Mr Kinyua maintained that FDI will play a key role in helping Kenya achieve it’s economic goals. ”We have opportunities in the areas of tourism, infrastructure, and we have a huge potential for clean energy, especially in geothermal,” he said.  

“The weaknesses that we [as a government] have been addressing are mainly in the areas of infrastructure, because infrastructure has been one of the key factors that have been [restricting] the growth prospects of our country. Also, on the governance side, we have a new constitution, and this will go some way in ensuring the implementation of a solid governmental framework.” 

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