(Adds details)
By Hereward Holland
NAIROBI, May 21 (Reuters) - Kenya's intended debut Eurobond issue is still on despite delays due to its post-election crisis, Finance Minister Amos Kimunya said on Wednesday.
"We are still on course," he told reporters.
Kimunya declined, however, to give a date for an issue the government had originally said would be worth $300 million and launched in the first quarter of 2008.
The minister said some members of the transaction team had been chosen. "We ... have identified part of the team.
Analysts say plans to issue the bond were set aside amid violence in January and February that killed at least 1,300 people and displaced 300,000 following the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Kenya's sovereign credit ratings to "B" due to the fighting.
It has since raised the outlook from negative to stable after Kibaki's government and the main opposition party agreed to form a coalition government for the sake of peace.
Calm has returned to Kenya and analysts say appetite for the initial public offering of mobile phone firm Safaricom [SCOM.NR], which Kimunya said was over-subscribed by four times, was an indication of investor confidence in the economy.
Kimunya said he was positive the economy would grow faster than revised estimates of between 4-6 percent he gave last month.
"I'm very optimistic the year will turn out better than the worst-case scenario that we had anticipated," Kimunya said.
"I'm happy that I might have to revise that figure upwards based on the uptake and recovery that we are seeing."
Planning and National Development Minister Wycliffe Oparanya on Tuesday told reporters he expected growth of 6.5 percent in the year. Analysts forecast growth to be much lower than that.
A Reuters poll of 11 experts and businessmen in April gave an average forecast of 3.8 percent growth in 2008. Last year's figure was 7.0 percent.
Kimunya said the government in April collected the highest tax revenue in Kenya's history, but did not give details.
"So as of now we are back on track and I'm very hopeful that we will close the year well above our tax targets."
The Kenya Revenue Authority's tax revenues stood at 360.2 billion shillings in 2006/07, and it had forecast collections of 407.9 billion shillings in the current year. (Writing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
