Kenya's KenGen sees approval for cash call by March

Feb 11, 2016 While speaking in an interview, the managing director of Kenya’s Electricity Generating Company recently said his company was aiming to have regulatory approval for its planned rights issue by March.

In December, KenGen had announced its plans to spend $1.57 billion to increase the country’s power grid by 500 megawatts in the year 2017.

“We have prepared the draft information memorandum and we are waiting for that to be approved by the board. Our target is to submit it to CMA (Capital Markets Authority) before the end of this month. We are making good progress of course with our target of being able to conclude the rights issue before the end of this financial year,”

Kenya, which relies heavily on renewable energy said such as geothermal and hydro power, is striving to increase its installed capacity to about 6,700 MW by 2017.

Mugo went on to say that KenGen had also secured a loan of about $370 million from the Japan International Cooperation Agency to build another 140 MW geothermal plant.

“JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) is already provided about $370 million towards financing Olkaria V which actually is the next big project we are implementing that project currently we are at the tender stage. We have already pre-qualified the contractors and we have sent the tender document to JICA for approval”