Locally

Kenyan shilling closes steady, Safaricom dampens stocks The Kenyan shilling closed unchanged on Thursday, but traders said it may weaken in coming days as the flow of dollars diminishes. Stocks ended four days of gains after Safaricom fell. On the secondary market, government bonds valued at 802.2 million shillings were traded, compared with 1.8 billion shillings traded a day earlier. [...] Budget Office warns National Treasury on Eurobond billions A key parliamentary team charged with advising MPs on the national budget Thursday warned that the Sh172 billion bond recently floated in the international debt market may cost the exchequer dearly. The Parliamentary Budget Office issued the advisory with a caution that the bond would turn out to be costly to the country unless the Government reviews its spending habits and uses the funds to finance development projects and not on recurrent expenditure. [...] Mumias Sugar full-year loss widens to KES 3.4b Mumias Sugar reported a wider loss before tax of 3.4 billion shillings ($38.31 million) in 2014, from 2.2 billion shillings last year, blaming weaker sugar prices. The company said in a statement yesterday that in the year to the end of June, sugar prices fell due to an influx of illegal sugar imports and a shortage of cane following a poor harvest. [...]

Regionally

EAC states to build 784km oil pipeline. Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda plan to jointly construct a 784km pipeline to transport refined petroleum products from Eldoret town, Kenya, to regional markets in the region. A joint commission coordinating the project said the pipeline will extend from Eldoret to Kampala and Kigali and help serve markets in Tanzania, Burundi, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. [...]

Internationally

Visa and Apple make entrance into mobile payments. The global leader in payments , Visa , has announced it is supporting consumer payments with the new iPhone 6 and other Apple devices. Thanks to a new capability called Visa Token Service, [...]