NAIROBI: Qatar-based Doha Bank Group is planning to enter the Kenyan market as its gateway to expanding across the African continent.
In a meeting with officials of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa), Doha Bank Group chief executive, Dr Raghavan Seetharaman, said the lender is seeking to expand its operations in Africa by leveraging on Kenya as a key financial hub.
Its focus would be to offer low-cost capital lending to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and for infrastructure development through partnerships with local financial institutions.
“What we hope to do is to partner with local banks to offer affordable cost-effective credit facilities. For a country whose inflation is at about 6 per cent, it is not logical to have lending rates above 15 per cent. We can structure loans below 10 per cent and even as low as 8 per cent. This would do wonders for your SMEs, which can then scale up to the mutual benefit of our economies,” Dr Seetharaman said.
Kepsa chief executive Carole Kariuki said the lender’s planned entry would give fillip to local firms.
“If we are able to deploy capital in all sectors more so agriculture, we can then create a strong value chain for the export of commodities to the Gulf region providing food security for both regions while at the same time, addressing our own unemployment challenge,” Ms Kariuki said.
The officials agreed to continue consultations on developing viable financing options in public private partnerships in infrastructure finance and development in the energy and transport sectors.
Others are construction of low-cost housing, development of large-scale agricultural processing for exports as well as fast tracking transformation of Nairobi into a regional financial hub.
