Korea-Kenya EDCF Framework Arrangement
DPM CHOO Signs Korea-Kenya EDCF Framework Arrangement
Deputy Prime Minister Kyungho CHOO and Kenyan Finance Minister Njuguna Ndung’u signed Korea-Kenya Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) Framework Arrangement[1] for the years 2022 through 2026 during the Korea-Kenya summit held in Seoul on November 23.
According to the EDCF Framework Arrangement, the Korean government plans to raise the ceiling of the EDCF loans to the Kenyan government to 1 billion dollars in 2022-26 from the previous 300 million dollars in 2018-20.
As a representative country in East Africa, Kenya is one of the emerging countries that has rapidly been growing based on its good government governance and competitive business environment[2]. Moreover, as Kenya has a strong demand for development and wants to attract Korean companies to do business in the country, the arrangement is expected to lay the foundation for the two countries to actively cooperate on high value-added infrastructure sectors such as energy and digital technologies.
The Korean government has recently made efforts to diversify EDCF partner countries, seeking to cooperate with emerging countries outside Asia where the EDCF is mainly focused. To that end, the government presented a mid- to long-term vision that aims to discover and foster next-generation partner countries in Africa at the EDCF Management Committee held in August, 2022.
The government hopes that this arrangement will contribute to the facilitation of economic cooperation with Kenya to the level of the cooperation with major partner countries in Asia. In addition, it will make continuous efforts to expand and strengthen economic ties with emerging countries in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.
[1] The EDCF Framework Arrangement refers to an inter-government arrangement that pre-arranges the period and ceiling of EDCF loans and comprehensively applies to projects that are approved within the preset period and ceiling.
[2] The World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 study showed Kenya was ranked second in the ease of doing business among sub-Saharan African countries whose population is over 1 million.
Please refer to the attached pdf.
