Lates News

Kenya's central bank governor, Patrick Njoroge, said on Wednesday that the bank plans to purchase gold to become the latest African country seeking to diversify its foreign exchange reserves by buying precious metals. Other African countries that have diversified their reserves by increasing their gold holdings include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Namibia. Njoroge said at a press conference, "We plan to buy gold as an additional buffer asset. This is one of the ways we have previously indicated to diversify our foreign exchange reserve allocation." As of February 9th, Kenya's foreign exchange reserves were $12.46 billion, equivalent to 5.4 months of import cover. The day before, the bank had already lowered the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 8.75% to boost credit growth.