NAIROBI - Kenya plans to raise an undisclosed amount of money through new bond sales in China, Japan and the Middle East, as it moves to diversify its external sources of debt and fund a Sh326 billion budget deficit in the new financial year starting July.

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u told the Business Daily the country is ready to look east after a successful Eurobond sale and tap into the Chinese market with a Panda bond, the Japanese market with a Samurai bond and the Middle East with sharia compliant Sukuk bond to reduce reliance on the western capital markets.

“Yes indeed. We need to diversify to other markets – Chinese market with Panda bond, Japanese market with Samurai bond and the Middle East with Wakala Sukuk bonds. All these diversified bond markets will support financing projects and programmes under the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda,” Prof Ndung’u said in a text message.