The Kenya Roads Board (KRB) has received bids from a consortium of Citi bank, Absa, Renaissance Capital, Equity Group holdings and Rand Merchant Bank seeking to arrange a Ksh 150 Billion financing plan to fund roads development, maintenance, and rehabilitation. Further, Dyer and Blair and Africa Finance Corporation submitted a joint bid.
According to Bloomberg, another group led by NCBA group, Standard Chartered, Co-operative bank, and KCB Group also submitted their bids. Standard Group’s Kenyan Unit and Lion’s head also belong to this last group.
SEE ALSO: Kenya Roads Board seeks advisors for KSh 150 Billion financing
The funds from this bond will form the greater Ksh 800m roads bond necessary to complete ongoing road projects. Besides, Standard cites that inflows from the bond will help settle pending infrastructure-related bills.
“With the planned infrastructure bond of Sh150 billion, all infrastructure-related bills will be settled early this year and aid the completion of all ongoing road and infrastructure projects across our homeland,” Uhuru earlier said.
However, the bond faces possible backlash given upcoming laws which will require treasury approval for the debt instrument. According to Business Daily, the bond is subject to scrutiny before commitment to the funding. Sentiments on the issue stem from concerns of lack of transparency towards approvals for borrowing from the Public Debt Management Office.
The point here is this idea of approving on an ad hoc basis is what we need to remove such that we inculcate a culture of transparency such that everybody knows,” said Harun Sirima, The Director-General of the office.
