Economic survey: Telephone call traffic drops to 78 billion minutes

By Peter Ochieng

Domestic telephone call traffic dropped by over 1.5 billion minutes, between 2021 and 2022.

This is according to data contained in the 2023 economic survey report, made public by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2023.

"Domestic telephone call traffic declined from 80.1 billion minutes in 2021 to 78.3 billion minutes in 2022."

However, the report states that international telephone call traffic grew from 1.0 billion minutes in 2021 to 1.1 billion minutes in 2022.

Under the same period, the report says mobile money transfer increased by 15.1 per cent in 2022 to Sh7.9 trillion.

On the internet and infrastructure front, available bandwidth capacity improved by 9.9 per cent to 15.0 million Mbps in 2022.

And as Kenyans in various parts of the country continue to grapple with effects of floods caused by heavy downpour, the report states that the annual average rainfall has been declining in the past five years.

Concerning domestic economic status, the 2023 economic survey report indicates that employment in the modern and informal sectors, excluding small scale farming and pastoralist activities went up from 18.3 million in 2021 to 19.1 million in 2022.

"Informal sector employment created 702.9 thousand new jobs and accounted for 86.1 per cent of the total jobs created outside of small scale agriculture and pastoralist activities," reads the report.

Additionally, the report says in 2022, the private sector created 94.5 thousand jobs, compared to 125.0 thousand jobs created in 2021.

Globally, the world GDP decreased to 3.4 in 2022 from a growth of 6.0 in 2021.

KNBS says Kenya's economy is expected to remain resilient in 2023, supported by a robust performance in the services sector and expected recovery in the agricultural sector.