The Chinese government has postponed Kenya’s debt repayments worth $245 million due over the next six months in a ‘debt repayment holiday’ in what is seen as another example of Beijing’s debt-trap diplomacy.
Kenya was scheduled to pay 27 billion shillings ($245 million) to China from January through June. The announcement of delayed payment came a week after the Paris Club of creditors agreed to delay $300 million in payments by the government of East Africa’s biggest economy.
The debt relief from Kenya’s second-biggest external creditor after the World Bank “will give us an opportunity and break on the kind of liquidity that we desire,” Treasury Secretary Ukur Yatani was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
The Kenyan government sought debt-repayment pauses as it struggles to deal with the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. The government had revised its 2020-21 budget-deficit forecast to 8.9 per cent of gross domestic product in October from an earlier estimate of 7.5…