Kenya Economic Report, June 2013, No. 8 : Time to Shift Gears--Accelerating Growth and Poverty Reduction in the New Kenya
The report has three main messages. First, the economy is expected to achieve higher growth targets in 2013 (5.7 percent) and 2014 (6 percent) over what it achieved in 2012 (4.6 percent), as a result of the smooth election process. However, the gov...
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| Format: | Economic Updates and Modeling |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/17886043/time-shift-gears-accelerating-growth-poverty-reduction-new-kenya http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16596 |
| Summary: | The report has three main messages.
First, the economy is expected to achieve higher growth
targets in 2013 (5.7 percent) and 2014 (6 percent) over what
it achieved in 2012 (4.6 percent), as a result of the smooth
election process. However, the government will need to make
a concerted effort, if it wishes to approach the 10 percent
annual growth rate foreseen in Vision 2030. The
report's second message emphasizes on the steps that
the government needs to take to create an enabling framework
for significant private sector-led growth. The Government
needs to continue to invest in infrastructure, to increase
domestic energy production, to address the other bottlenecks
that affect the cost of doing business, and to continue
following sound monetary and fiscal policies. Finally, the
report's third message focuses on the poverty situation
in Kenya, noting progress made since 2005, when an estimated
47 percent of the population lived below the poverty line,
to the present, where poverty estimates range between 34 and
42 percent, the imprecision resulting from the lack of any
recent survey data. The report notes the spatial dimension
of poverty, and the poor tend to live in the arid and
semi-arid regions in the north and north east. It concludes
with thoughts about a poverty reduction strategy, which
would emphasize on job creation, enhanced productivity of
smallholder farms, strengthening and expanding cash transfer
programs, targeted public spending programs to provide
quality education to the rural poor, and improved poverty
monitoring, so that the government can rapidly see which
activities have the greatest impacts on improving the lives
of the poor. |
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