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Bloomberg
Kenya plans to overhaul legislation governing its financial sector by creating new agencies that regulate the cost of credit and protect consumers, according to a draft law on the Treasury’s website. The Financial Markets Conduct Bill seeks to “promote a fair, non-discriminatory marketplace for access to credit, to provide for the establishment of uniform practices and standards in relation to the conduct of providers of financial products and financial services,†according to the document. It also aims to establish the Financial Markets Conduct Authority, the Financial Sector Ombudsman and the Financial Sector Tribunal.
The draft law does not do away with interest-rate limits that parliament introduced in 2016, which capped credit costs at 400 basis points above the prevailing benchmark central bank rate, even though the Treasury has conceded the law has hurt access to credit in East Africa’s biggest economy.
While Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich said the ministry was working on new legislation to either repeal that rule or tone it down, the Financial Markets Conduct Bill retains the state’s prerogative to set commercial interest rates.