Kenya's gross domestic product grew by 4.4 percent in the third quarter of 2017, compared to 5.6 percent in the same period last year, the statistics office said on Friday. "The macroeconomic fundamentals remained largely stable and supportive of growth. However, uncertainty associated with political environment coupled with effects of adverse weather conditions slowed down the performance of the economy," the report said.

"The period under review registered the slowest growth since the fourth quarter of 2013." Kenya's Finance Minister Henry Rotich said last month that the economy was expected to rebound in 2018 after drought and political turmoil during a prolonged election cycle cut nearly 1 percent from this year's early economic growth forecast, trimming it to 5 percent.

Credit growth has also slowed, partly because of a cap on commercial bank lending rates imposed last September. Key sectors of the economy that slowed included manufacturing; health; accommodation and food services; mining and quarrying and education. Financial and insurance activities recorded the largest deceleration from 7.1 percent in third quarter 2016 to 2.4 percent this year. The current account deficit widened to 145.4 billion Kenyan shillings ($1.41 billion) in the third quarter of 2017, compared to 112.8 billion in the same period the previous year, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said.

This was driven by bigger imports of food and petroleum products in the third quarter of 2017, the bureau said. It was partly offset by a growth in the international trade in services. The stock of public and publicly guaranteed external debt increased from 1,854.7 billion shillings at the end of September 2016 to 2,310.2 billion as at end of the September 2017.

Copyright Reuters, 2018