Kenyan Currency

Kenya becomes the first East African country to be granted lower-middle income status, joining the African countries of Morocco, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Senegal, Ghana, Sudan, Swaziland, Lesotho and Zambia. The World Bank has confirmed Kenya’s status following the change in the way the size of its economy is calculated, showing it was 25 per cent larger than previously estimated. Kenya’s GNI per capita income is estimated at about $1,290 (Sh127, 215).

Each year on July 1, the World Bank revises the income classification of the world’s economies based on estimates of GNI per capita for the previous year. According to the World Bank ten countries moved up in their income bracket.

Bangladesh, Kenya, Myanmar, and Tajikistan moved up becoming lower-middle income countries, joining those with annual incomes of $1,046 to $4,125; Mongolia and Paraguay moved from lower middle-income status to upper middle-income; and  Argentina, Hungary, Seychelles, and Venezuela have now moved from the upper middle income category to high income.

South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, has fallen out of the lower middle-income classification and back into low-income status. This has been attributed to civil war and a national oil industry at a standstill. Maldives and Mongolia were the highest movers in the rankings – up 13 and 8 places, respectively. Oman and Timor-Leste fell most from their 2013 ranking – down 15 places for both.

In a press release issued by the World Bank it was noted that:

“While we need to measure development progress in different ways, income-based measures, such as GNI, remain the central yardstick for assessing economic performance, “said Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President. “Our latest data show that in terms of this indicator, the world’s economic geography has changed a lot. In 1994, 56.1% of the world’s population – 3.1 billion people – lived in the 64 low-income countries. In 2014, this was down to 8.5%, or 613 million people, living in 31 countries. It is heartening to see that over the last one year itself four nations crossed over that critical line from the low-income to the lower-middle income category.”

Kenya revised its economic data in September last year, expanding its GDP by 25 per cent after recalculation. It is now the fourth biggest economy in sub-Saharan African, with Nigeria, South Africa and Angola being the three biggest economies in the region.