Monthly Archives: January 2012

Kenya’s Simple Debt

This interesting graphic of the US debt translated into a family’s mortgage has been making the rounds on Facebook.

How does Kenya’s debt stack up? Drawing on various internet document & newspaper sources and converting tax revenue, the last budget and government debt it breaks down as:

Annual family income: Kshs. 609,000
Money the family spent: Kshs. 919,000
Annual debt payments: Kshs. 32,000
Outstanding debt: Kshs. 1,400,000
Budget cuts: Annual announcements of travel cuts, freezes on new vehicles, are offset by ever increasing salaries and new government structures

Is this accurate? Corrections on figures are welcomed

Kenyan Vitalstatistix

Sample these common humorous quotes about statistics: Definition – the science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures; 98% of all statistics are made up; statistics are like bikinis – what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital

As Kenyans celebrate the open data movement of 2011, some in the finance and planning department of banks, and many companies and offices involved in analysis are probably lamenting the loss of one of the most useful statistical publications that the Kenya Government used to put out – the Monthly Economic Review from the Central Bank of Kenya.

The document was a treasure of vital information such as from GDP growth by sector, monthly inflation comparisons (over several years), overnight & inter-bank rates, bad loan positions, Kenya’s monthly exports & imports (numbers and sectorial components), tourist visitor numbers, manufacturing output, vehicle imports, Kilindini port volumes, composition of Kenya local and foreign debt, gold holdings, money supply etc. that many found to be very useful.

The last report put out was in August 2011, and while there’s little doubt that such information is still being collected, for some reasons it’s not being shared anymore. And this may have coincided with the shillings’ haywire.

The report compiled reports form diverse parts of the economy and published them in a nice easy to use format compared to some difficulty obtaining the same from the official Bureau of Statistics or having to wade through speeches of Ministers or Permanent secretaries for the information.

Cheque Truncation Part III

The much vaunted cheque truncation may be here at last after a notice at the bank branch that it will be in effect from Monday – January 16 – six months later than scheduled. Cheques may now take as little as one day to clear. However the notice also reminds & cautions bank customers that even cheques they write will hit their account within a day of presentation – and that they should watch that they don’t get inconvenienced .i.e. issue cheques that bounce (bad for them, good for the bank which will hit them with more charges)

Having cheques clear faster is also a matter of necessity for banks if they hope to have cheques remain relevant and preferred for small payments. The number of cheques used in Kenya in 2010 (15.7m) and 2011 (16.7) was lower than the 16.8 million used in each of the two years before – and having a cheque book is less of factor when people open personal accounts.

The volume of transactions and money moved by M-Pesa and other mobile money systems show they are the preferred way for instant payments. Banks did not help themselves in this by relegating banker’s cheques (previously the preferred way of paying school fees) to a slower clearing cycle – same as other regular cheques (to guard against fraud), even before direct deposits (to school accounts) and M-Pesa established themselves. By having cheques clear faster ensure they don’t go the way of the travellers’ cheques.

More on cheque truncation in Part I and Part II

Blogging in 2011

Last year was a very busy one, but which meant there were fewer blog posts. However, there was more collaboration and guest posting, as well as more travel tales, but with limits in what to write. While there were many more events to attend (sometimes two a day), there was some difficulty in finding what to write that was not better expressed on in short posts on twitter.

Fortunately, life as a consumer of goods, services, and information was an data source of posts – and here are the most read posts (published in 2011), some of which had links to others in the top 25.

1. Mututho a.k.a. the new Alcohol Law in Kenya was the most read post of the year.

2.Kenya bank rankings was a list of the top Kenyan banks for 2010.

3. Farewell Mars Group was written when this Kenya anti-corruption watchdog group suddenly shut down it’s website (but it’s now back online).

4. Prepaid Electricity meters were rolled out by the Kenya Power & Lighting Company and many people who were in the dark searched online for information about the new system.

5. A post about Overlappers and bad driving was the most popular motoring post.

6. Pepsi in Kenya was about their quiet re-entry to this market. Somewhat related was a link to my guest post about KFC in Kenya (No. 24) that was published in the UpNairobi magazine.

7. Banks introduced a new cheque design & clearance system. But did it flop? (No. 23)

8. Guide to Accra by @Coldtusker was the top in the series of African capital travel series write-ups.

9. Another of the travel series was the Guide to Addis Ababa by @Kahenya which proved very useful as it gave me a last minute reminder not to fly to Ethiopia without a yellow fever certificate. Other popular travel tales were from the Hague (No. 19), Gaborone Botswana (No. 22) by @MarvinTumbo and Asmara in rarely visited Eritrea (No. 25).

10. More driving tales rounded up the top ten – this one focused on Thika Road as did another a guest post wondering how Kenyans will maintain Thika Road (No. 13) when the Chinese contractors leave.

11. Unplanned Infrastructure in Nairobi was the most popular real estate one, along with other posts on sector developments (No. 14), Tatu City (No. 20), and other Golf Resorts (No. 21)