Education, mining drive 9.9 percent third-quarter GDP rebound
Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as measured at market price, edged up by 9.9 percent in the three months to September compared to a 2.1 percent contraction at a similar period in 2020 on account of an uptick in education and mining activities.
In the quarter under review, the education sector recorded a 64.7 percent rebound as mining expanded by 25.1 percent even as businesses in the accommodation industry recorded 24.8 percent improvement as manufacturing grew by 9.5 percent.
Resumption of learning after schools were closed for most parts of 2020 due to the pandemic saw education emerge as the best performing sector. Education reported a 17.4 percent slump during the comparable quarter last year.
The mining and quarrying industry was the second-best performing segment having grown by 25.1 percent from a 7 percent uptick in the third quarter last year.
Further, the transport and storage sector grew by 13 percent largely due to the lifting of Covid-19 induced travel and movement restrictions that had been imposed in the period to September 2020.
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In the period under review, the number of travelers using the SGR went up by 529.1 percent to 600,070 from 95,378 in 3Q20.
The agricultural sector however contracted, for the third consecutive quarter, by 1.8 percent compared to a 4.2 percent jump in the third quarter of 2020, attributable to poor weather conditions experienced in the country for the better part of the year, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said.
Overall, rising crops and animal production saw agriculture remain as the largest contributor to the economy at 20.5 percent which was a marginal decline from the 21.8 percent contribution in the three months to September 2020.
