Uhuru reappoints Patrick Njoroge as CBK Governor

President Uhuru Kenyatta has re-appointed Dr. Patrick Njoroge as Central Bank of Kenya Governor for another four year term.

In a special gazette notice, Dr. Njoroge whose tenure was set to end on June 19,2019 will now serve until 2023.

Deputy Governor Sheila M’Mbijjewe and board chairman Mohammed Nyaoga’s terms have also been extended for the same period.

The CBK Governor was appointed in June 2015 as a replacement for Prof. Njuguna Ndungu on a four-year contract.

Njoroge’s tenure has until now been a tale of two sides of a coin representing both the good and the bad.

The good side has featured the strengthening of regulations in the financial sector to include the tightening of anti-money laundering laws.

On the flip-side, the challenging aspects to the tenure came in early represented mainly by the back-to-back collapse of Dubai and Chase Bank in late 2015 and the eventual demise of Imperial Bank in 2016.

Governor Njoroge has meanwhile made enemies among Members of Parliament who have most recently accused him of policing the financial sector outside the bounds of existing regulations, with the legislators threatening earlier in the year to oppose an extension of the governor’s term.

At the center of the spate has been the governor’s failure to publish banking regulations prescribing customer deposits and withdrawals following amendments to the 2018 Financial Act.

Njoroge has in the inter-mediating time bowed down to pressure from legislators to agree to the publishing of the essential regulations.

Assessing his four-year stint, Governor Njoroge summarised his tenure as the very head and tails defining the course of his stay but insisted on the need to focus on the deliverables amidst the transition audit.

“There have been many successes, failures and sleepless nights. This is however not the time to have a reappraisal of what has happened but a period to deliver on what needs to be done,” he said.

The Governor is keen to deliver on a fresh reporting framework for Credit Referencing Bureaus (CRBs) and fast track the release of new generation notes at-least in the short term.