Browsing: Stanbic Bank Kenya PMI

• Kenya’s business conditions weakened slightly in March despite easing inflation.
• Kenyan firms reduced their purchases of inputs in line with weaker sales.
• Most businesses remain optimistic about their workforce size and revenue growth in the year’s second quarter (April-June).

The latest Stanbic Bank Kenya Purchasing Managers’ Index indicates that Kenya’s business conditions weakened slightly in March despite easing inflation.

The deterioration in operating conditions was witnessed across the private sector as order book volumes and output levels contracted. The downturn contrasted with February, which saw an improvement in the private sector for the first time in six months.

Despite the decline, the survey data provided some positive signals for Kenyan businesses. Staffing and inventories showed further growth, indicating potential expansion opportunities.

Additionally, input cost inflation slowed to its lowest level in over three years amid a recovery in the shilling against the US dollar and other major currencies, including those …

• Kenya’s private sector activity and new orders rises for the first time in six months.
• Selling price inflation hits long-run average as cost burdens ease.
• However, PMI shows lowest confidence towards future output in the survey’s history.

Kenya’s business conditions improved in February, expanding private sector activity due to a further softening of inflationary pressures supported a fresh increase in new order volumes.

Stanbic Bank Kenya Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for February registered at 51.3 per cent as lower fuel prices helped to cool input cost inflation to a 26-month low, supporting the softest increase in output prices for one-and-a-half years.

Improving business conditions are said to have led Kenyan companies to expand staffing levels at a faster rate albeit by largely hiring casuals pointing to a cautionary stance towards hiring permanently.

Nevertheless, confidence regarding future activity fell to a survey low, suggesting a broad degree of uncertainty that activity …

Kenya’s private sector activities contracted in September as high fuel prices and inflation took a toll on businesses, which saw a drop in sales, the latest Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) now indicates.

Stanbic Bank Kenya’s PMI slid back into negative territory at the end of the third quarter, as firms saw a sharp contraction in new orders following a brief respite in August. In the period, elevated inflationary pressures and rising fuel bills dampened client sales, leading to the second-fastest rise in input costs in the survey’s near-decade history.…