The country\u2019s foreign reserves declined by Ksh11.77 billion this week even as remittance inflows eased and the Kenyan shilling weakened slightly against major currencies.<\/p>\n
Data from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows the reserves stood at USD 13.149 billion, down from USD 13.240 billion the previous week.<\/p>\n
Despite the drop, CBK said the reserves remain above the 5.6-month import cover, exceeding the statutory minimum of four months of import cover.<\/p>\n
The decline comes as the government moves to close accounts for the 2025\/2026 financial year within the next 10 days.<\/p>\n
The Central Bank of Kenya<\/p>\n
Photo<\/p>\n
KO Associates<\/p>\n
At the same time, remittances in May fell by 0.9 per cent to Ksh50.98 billion from Ksh51.45 billion in April.<\/p>\n
The Ksh470 million decline saw the 12-month cumulative inflows to May 2026 drop by 0.5 per cent to Ksh647.7 billion from Ksh650.94 billion in the same period in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemittance inflows remain a key source of foreign exchange earnings and continue to support the balance of payments,\u201d CBK asserted.<\/p>\n
According to the 2025 Remittances Household Survey Report by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, about 50,000 Kenyans working abroad returned home for various reasons, including expired contracts.<\/p>\n
This perhaps offers a window into the declining remittances, although neither the CBK nor the KNBS report points to this directly.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Kenyan shilling marginally weakened against the US dollar, trading at Ksh129.55 on Thursday compared to Ksh129.48 on June 11.<\/p>\n
The shilling also lost ground against the pound, euro and Japanese yen over the week.<\/p>\n
CBK data shows the shilling traded at an average of Ksh173.79 against the pound, down from Ksh173.35 the previous week.<\/p>\n
Against the euro, it slipped to Ksh150.16 from Ksh149.77, while against the Japanese yen it edged down to Ksh80.84 from Ksh80.79.<\/p>\n
A photo depicting a person holding Kenya Shilling notes and US Dollar notes<\/p>\n
Photo<\/p>\n
Janta Kenya<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The country\u2019s foreign reserves declined by Ksh11.77 billion this week even as remittance inflows eased and the Kenyan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-715779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}