Kenyan shilling holds steady, shares inch up

The Kenyan shilling held steady against the dollar on Tuesday while shares eked out meager gains.

At the 1330 GMT close of trade, commercial banks posted the shilling at 102.25/35 per dollar, unchanged from Monday’s closing rate.

“Activity is still thin,” said a trader with a Nairobi-based commercial bank.

Another trader said the shilling may have benefited from a liquidity mop-up by the central bank during the session, which usually makes it slightly more expensive for banks to hold dollars.

In the stock market, the main NSE-20 share index edged up 0.37 percent to close at 3,781.36 points, lifted by shares of telecoms firm Safaricom, which rose nearly 3 percent to close at 16 shillings per share.

In the debt market, bonds worth 949 million shillings ($9.29 million) were traded, up from Monday’s volume of 803 million shillings.