Kenya: Technical Assistance Report-Report on Data Quality Assessment for Public Sector Debt Statistics Mission (July 23-29, 2025)

This report presents the findings and recommendations from an assessment of Kenya’s public sector debt statistics (PSDS) using the IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF) for PSDS. The assessment was undertaken in July 2025 as part of an initiative—funded by the Government of Japan—to strengthen the quality of public sector debt data in select African countries. Kenya’s public debt is considered sustainable but remains at high risk of debt distress, according to the IMF-World Bank debt sustainability analysis (DSA) of October 2024. The public debt-to-GDP ratio reached a peak of 72 percent at the end of the 2022/23 fiscal year. Since then, debt-to-GDP levels have dropped somewhat, with debt reported at 66 percent of GDP at the end of the 2023/24 fiscal year, according to national debt reports. Around half of the total debt stock is external, mainly provided on concessional terms, and the other half is domestic. Two key challenges facing the authorities are managing the exchange rate risk of external debt and the high-interest rate cost of domestic debt. The report concludes that, while Kenya’s public debt statistics are broadly accurate and timely, improvements are needed to broaden the scope of public sector debt reporting. In particular, it recommends expanding the coverage to comprehensively cover the non-guaranteed borrowing of public units outside of central government and to include the stock of other accounts payable (pending bills). In addition, further enhancements are needed to align the compilation and dissemination of public debt with the international statistical standards, including reporting external and domestic debt based on the residency of the creditor/investor, reviewing details of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and securitization operations to ensure all related debts are captured, and providing more comprehensive and accessible metadata to explain the data sources, coverage, compilation methods, concepts, and definitions.