knbs data: The National Treasury ke.knbs.debt-service-ratio.annual annual

Debt Service Charges Against Export Earnings.

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VERSION v2026-08-19

UPDATED 18d ago

CHECKED 1d ago

COVERAGE 2018/19 - 2024/25

SHAPE 21 × 7

SIZE 5.0 KB

FREQUENCY annual

PIPELINE automated

LICENSE Not stated

SOURCE www.knbs.or.ke

What Kenya's external debt service cost against what the country earned abroad, for the seven fiscal years to 2024/25. 21 observations: the charges, the exports of goods and services they are measured against, and the percentage the first is of the second.

The ratio fell from 31.5 per cent in 2018/19 to 13.8 per cent in 2024/25, and the reason is the denominator. External debt service was 368.5 billion shillings at the start of the period and 381.2 billion at the end, a rise of 3.4 per cent. Exports of goods and services went from 1.17 trillion to 2.77 trillion, a rise of 136 per cent. Kenya's debt service did not get cheaper; its export earnings more than doubled around it.

The fall was not steady. The ratio was 29.8 per cent in 2023/24, when external charges nearly doubled in a single year, before dropping to 13.8 per cent the year after.

**The two sides of this ratio are not the same period.** The numerator is a financial year and the denominator a calendar year, in a column labelled with the financial one. The source says so on the rows themselves, and both qualifiers are kept in the series label and repeated in the basis column, so a consumer that strips parentheses out of a legend still has the fact.

The table states no unit anywhere, in its caption or above its columns. The shillings are read as Table 5.10's, which does state one, and the charges row here is Table 5.10's external charges row unchanged in all seven years. That agreement is asserted before anything is published: should the two ever diverge, the borrowed unit stops being justified and the dataset does not build.

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DEBT AGAINST EXPORTS

Kenya's debt service fell from 31.5 to 13.8 per cent of export earnings because exports more than doubled, not because the debt service fell.

External debt service and exports of goods and services, indexed to 2018/19 · fiscal years 2018/19 to 2024/25

SOURCE: The National Treasury · via Kenya National Bureau of Statistics · Debt Service Charges Against Export Earnings (annual) · Updated 2026-08-19

#	fiscal_year	period_start	series	basis	status	value	unit
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COLUMN	TYPE	DESCRIPTION	UNIT
fiscal_year	string	The column label, a fiscal year beginning 1 July. The exports row is a calendar year printed under this label: see basis.	-
period_start	date	1 July of the opening year of the column label	-
series	string	The row as the source names it, with its wrapped period qualifier folded back in	-
basis	string	financial_year, calendar_year or ratio. The two sides of the ratio are counted over different periods, which this column is here to make legible.	-
status	string	final, revised or provisional	-
value	float64	Millions of shillings, or a percentage for the ratio row	-
unit	string	ksh_million, or percent for the ratio row	-

CITATION · APA 7

imibare contributors. (2026). Debt Service Charges Against Export Earnings [Data set]. imibare. v2026-08-19. https://imibare.org/datasets/ke.knbs.debt-service-ratio.annual