Kenyan shilling gains as government bond sale looms; stocks inch up

Kenya’s shilling gained ground against the dollar on Tuesday, helped by foreign exchange inflows before a government bond auction later this week.

At the 1330 GMT market close, the shilling was quoted at 101.90/102.00 to the dollar, compared with Monday’s close of 102.05/15.

Traders said the shilling has been boosted by inflows of dollars ahead of the auction of a nine-year, government infrastructure bond on Dec. 9.

“We saw big, big inflows today, and that’s why we have broken the 102 level,” said one Nairobi-based trader.

The shilling has hovered in a range of roughly 102.00 to 102.50 since early November, after appreciating from September levels when it almost touched an all-time low of 106.80.

In the stock market, the benchmark NSE20 share index nudged higher, gaining 4.86 points, or 0.1 percent, to close at 3,994.88 points.

In the debt market, bonds worth 2.6 billion shillings ($25.53 million) were traded, up from previous day’s volume of 1.5 billion shillings.