{"id":28013,"date":"2012-03-07T02:14:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T07:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/fx\/2012\/03\/07\/central-bank-of-kenya-holds-lending-rate-at-18-00\/"},"modified":"2012-03-07T02:14:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T07:14:00","slug":"central-bank-of-kenya-holds-lending-rate-at-18-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2012\/03\/07\/central-bank-of-kenya-holds-lending-rate-at-18-00\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Bank of Kenya Holds Lending Rate at 18.00%"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"right\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\ntweetmeme_style = 'compact';\n<\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p><span><span><span><span>The&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbank.go.ke\/\" target=\"_blank\">Central Bank of Kenya<\/a><span><span>&nbsp;maintained its benchmark lending rate at 18.00%, and held the Cash Reserve Ratio at 5.25%. &nbsp;The central bank Governor, Njuguna Ndung&#8217;u, said of the decision: &#8220;This will ensure that the monetary policy measures in place continue to work through the economy to deliver the desired outcomes of reducing inflation, dampening inflationary&nbsp;expectations&nbsp;and sustaining exchange rate stability.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/><a name='more'><\/a><br \/><span><span>A<\/span><span>t its December meeting the CBK&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/2011\/12\/central-bank-of-kenya-hikes-rate-150bps.html\">increased the&nbsp;interest rate<\/a>&nbsp;by 150bps to 18.00%, after hiking by&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/2011\/11\/central-bank-of-kenya-hikes-rate-550bps.html\">550 basis points<\/a>&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><span>and raising the&nbsp;Cash Reserve Ratio&nbsp;by 50bps to 5.25%at its November meeting&nbsp;. &nbsp;That move followed a 400bp increase of the&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/2011\/10\/central-bank-of-kenya-ups-rate-400bps.html\">interest rate<\/a><span>&nbsp;to 11.00% at its October meeting, after raising&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/2011\/09\/central-bank-of-kenya-raises-rate-75bps.html\">75bps<\/a><span>&nbsp;in September, and previously increasing, and subsequently decreasing the&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/2011\/07\/central-bank-of-kenya-reverses-discount.html\">discount window rate<\/a><span>&nbsp;by 75 basis points to 6.25%.<\/span><\/p>\n<div><span><br \/>Kenya experienced annual headline inflation of 18.93 in December, down slightly from 19.72% in November, but still higher than 18.91% in October, 17.3% in September, 16.7% in August, up from 15.5% in July, and up sharply from 9.19% in March this year, according to&nbsp;<span>inflation data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. &nbsp;The Central Bank of Kenya has an inflation target of 5 percent. &nbsp;<\/span><\/span><br \/><span><span><br \/>Kenya reported seasonally adjusted GDP growth of -4.6% in Q2, compared to +2% in Q1. &nbsp;<\/span><\/span><span>A Kenyan Ministry of Finance official noted that Kenya is expected to record economic growth around 5-5.5% in 2011, and 6% in 2012. &nbsp;<\/span><br \/><span><br \/>The Kenyan Shilling (KES) is about flat against the US dollar over the past year (having weakened by as much as 31% at the bottom); meanwhile the USDKES exchange rate last traded around 83.95<\/span><span><br \/> <\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><span><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\">www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/8290544642025682538-349991047185967741?l=www.centralbanknews.info\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The&nbsp;Central Bank of Kenya&nbsp;maintained its benchmark lending rate at 18.00%, and held the Cash Reserve Ratio at 5.25%. &nbsp;The central bank Governor, Njuguna Ndung&#8217;u, said of the decision: &#8220;This will ensure that the monetary policy measures in place continue to work through the economy to deliver the desired outcomes of reducing inflation, dampening inflationary&nbsp;expectations&nbsp;and sustaining &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2012\/03\/07\/central-bank-of-kenya-holds-lending-rate-at-18-00\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Central Bank of Kenya Holds Lending Rate at 18.00%&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}