ABSTRACT The implementation of the Kenya vision 2030, coupled with financing expenditures under the devolved government in the new constitution requires enormous resources. The vision requires the government to ensure that the bulk of its expenditures are met from tax revenue and that overall expenditure should be controlled to ensure stable macroeconomic environment. The Government of Kenya continued to carry out tax reforms over the years with an aim of improving taxation efficiency and in...
ABSTRACT Despite the significant monitoring of training offered by universities in Kenya, the number of unemployed graduates due to perceived lack of quality and work-related skills is rising. Key policy makers are reluctant to admit the extent of Kenya‟s graduate unemployment, while employers apportion more blame to the universities. In turn, the universities blame employers for „locking out‟ students from opportunities to gain relevant work experience. The purpose of this study was to...
ABSTRACT The Kenya government, in collaboration with other stakeholders involved in the provision of family planning services, have put in place various strategies and policies to increase uptake of family planning services. These are aimed at increasing contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR), reduction in both total fertility rate (TFR) and unmet need for family planning services. Despite the various strategies and policies, total fertility rate still remains high at 4.6 percent, while CPR and ...
ABSTRACT Good health plays an important role in boosting economic growth, poverty reduction and the realization of social goals. However, the Survey of Health Care Utilisation and Expenditure of 2013 found that the high cost of health care was one of the major reason cited by households for not seeking health care. Moreover, out-ofpocket (OOP) payment for healthcare is the main source of health care financing in Kenya. OOP spending on outpatient care and inpatient services accounted for appr...
ABSTRACT The importance of bilateral relations to any country is to offer the country the chance to access resources that are not locally available. The bilateral relations between China and Kenya have been developing and evolving since Kenya‟s independence. This study sought to examine the effect of Kenya‟s bilateral relations with China on economic growth of Kenya. The objectives of the study were to assess the effect of China‟s Loans, FDI and AID on Kenya‟s economic growth. The st...
ABSTRACT The study aimed at establishing the effects of regional financial integration on economic growth and intra-regional trade in East African Community (EAC) Countries. The motivation was based on the conflicting views on the effect of regional financial integration on economic growth and intraregional trade. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, both quantitative and qualitative data were used. Data for the period 2000 to 2009 for Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda were emplo...
ABSTRACT The effect of government size on economic growth has given rise to conflicting views among economists. Some view a large government size as harmful to economic growth due to inefficiencies inherent in government. The other group of economists argues that a larger size of government is likely to enhance economic growth. Kenya’s public expenditure has been experiencing rapid growth since 1963, while GDP growth over the same period has not followed the same path. The main objective of...
ABSTRACT To determine the correct mix of dividend and retained earnings and how it affects profitability has been a subject in Literature of financial management. This research came in to contribute to the on-going debate by examining the relationship between dividend pay-out and financial performance of manufacturing firms listed in the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The key motivation was to establish if the findings of this study are consistent with prior empirical studies as found in both S...
ABSTRACT The main purpose of this study was to determine the effect of energy price liberalization on economic growth in Kenya. Energy sector is an important component of economy, and just like other goods and services, energy price affects its demand, supply and use. The use of energy is embedded in the production function that leads to economic growth. In Kenya, the energy sector contributes about 9.49 percent of GDP with the petroleum sector, electricity sector and fuel wood sector contrib...
ABSTRACT Agricultural activities contribute about 33% of the East African Community‟s Gross Domestic Product (World Bank, 2009), 80 per cent of the populace depend on agriculture directly and indirectly for food, employment and income, while about 40 million people in EAC suffer from hunger. Intra-EAC trade is very low, that is, at 9 per cent of the total regional trade, but it is on upward trend. Agricultural trade accounts for over 40 per cent of the intra-EAC trade. This study investigat...
ABSTRACT The Constituencies Development Fund is one of the decentralized efforts started by Government of Kenya to tackle poverty and regional imbalances in Kenya since 2003. It has allocated over 40 per cent of the resources annually to education sector including bursaries. However, doubts have been cast over time as to whether the Fund’s expenditure is effectively targeted towards meeting the needs of the poor as anticipated especially in the education bursaries that take substantial reso...
ABSTRACT This study investigated the dynamic linkage between foreign equity flows and equity returns at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) since foreign equity flows are expected to induce a surge in domestic stock prices and consequently a fall in price when foreign equity investors exit the domestic stock market. An increase in the stock prices attracts foreign investors in to the domestic stock market. The main objective of this study was to understand how stock prices in Kenya influenc...
ABSTRACT The development of microfinance in Kenya is seen as a catalyst for promoting household welfare and performance of micro and small enterprises (MSEs). Through various policy frameworks, the sub-sector has recorded considerable increases in; microfinance gross lending, usage of informal microfinance and the number of licensed microfinance banks. Despite these developments, households continue to face low levels of welfare while MSEs continue to suffer from high levels of financial excl...
ABSTRACT Most of the studies relating banking activities and macroeconomic behavior of many nations focused on the effect of macroeconomic instability on banking sectors. This study rather examines the impact of banking instability on the Nigerian economy. Annual data were used ranging from 1980 to 2011 drawn from various data publication issues domestically and those outside the country. Variables taken into consideration in the course of analysis are those proxies to the banking instabilit...
ABSTRACT This study has observed the impact of foreign aid to the agriculture, education and health sectors, on the growth of the respective sectors in Ghana, over a period from 1980 to 2013 using the Vector Autoregression (VAR) approach. The necessary time series tests such as stationary test, cointegration test, error correction, and Granger causality tests in vector error correction model were carried out. The empirical results from the regression reveals that, foreign aid has a significa...