Live; Central Bank Kenya Post MPC Briefing

In its April meeting held on Wednesday, Kenya’s Central Bank MPC lowered the CBR from 7.25% to 7%, the lowest level in 9 years.

The Kenyan Wallstreet team will be sharing highlights of Governor Patrick Njoroge’s post-MPC briefing. This MPC meeting was special seeing that the meeting occurs bi-monthly but this one occurs barely a month since the last meeting on the back of significant developments globally in terms of evolution and containment of coronavirus.

Njoroge begins the teleconference by saying that new economic data has been released since the last MPC meeting on March 23 pertaining to the effects of coronavirus pandemic. For instance, the IMF says that the global economy is already in recession and expects a significant contraction of -3%. Further, data released in mid-April reveals that advance economies will contract by 6.1% with emerging markets forecast to contract by 1%.

Furthermore, COVID19 has hammered US labor markers leading to a record 26 million unemployment claims in under five weeks.

Analysts remain concerned about the heakth of the global economy