Determining if Kenya’s foreign debt portfolio management is optimal

Abstract

The study seeks to define Kenya's optimal external debt portfolio. The optimization scheme employed minimizes foreign liabilities in a foreign debt portfolio which includes a combination of foreign assets and liabilities of the country in question, which in this case is Kenya. It will involve comparing the optimal foreign debt portfolio with the currency exchange rates. The time series data that will be used consists of exchange rate data for the period from 1970 to 2016 and the percentage of external long-term public and publicly guaranteed debt share contracted in Japanese yen, Swiss Franc, U .K pound sterling for Kenya. The study will apply the cointegration methodology where it involves first carrying out unit root tests on the data to find out whether it is stationary. Thereafter, introduce the cointegration tests which will be used to form the results and discussions of this study. Ideally, a debt portfolio will be deemed optimal if movements in the exchange rates do not granger cause changes in the debt shares denominated in the corresponding currency.