What Kenya’s GDP growth means

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics says the economy grew 6 percent in the third quarter of 2018, compared with 4.7 percent in the same period in 2017.

The economy expanded faster in the third quarter of this year than in the same period last year due to strong performance in the agriculture and construction sectors, the statistics office said on Monday.

It said the agriculture sector expanded by 5.2 percent compared with 3.7 percent in the third quarter of 2017, helped by better weather.

Gross foreign reserves increased to 1,222.5 billion from 1,085.6 billion in the same period of last year.

What this means

According to Investopedia and thebalance.com, Gross Domestic Product (The value of the total goods and services produced in a country annually or quarterly), influences job growth, personal finance and investments which are key determinants for investors when deciding where to do their asset allocations.

With growth, investors do comparisons on the health of the economy of a country to ascertain where best opportunities are with many opting to buy shares of companies in well-doing economies.

If a country’s development slows, then investors dust off their resumes because slow economic progress leads to redundancies and joblessness.

 

According to figures released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2018, countries with the largest GDP in descending order are 1. The United States, 2. China, 3. Japan, 4. Germany, 5. The United Kingdom, 6. France, 7. India, 8. Italy, 9. Brazil and 10. Canada.