Mombasa tea auction starts live data feeds

Tea brokers have begun real-time streaming of the Mombasa tea auction to authorised stakeholders ahead of the April implementation of electronic trading. The lobby says the auctions have been available online since August 25, with the net-cast capturing buyers’ bids and the accepted final bids by brokers.“There shall also be instantaneous data visualisation and analysis, automated data warehousing and historical achieving, quick and efficient post-auction reconciliation and world-class auction floor operations,” said EATTA managing director Edward Mudibo.  Read More

Kenyan shilling steady, stocks close higher on NSE listing

The Kenyan shilling was steady on Tuesday, supported by a second straight day of central bank action in the money market as demand for dollars from importers picked up, while stocks closed higher, helped by the listing of the Nairobi Securities Exchange. On its first day of trading, the demutualised Nairobi Securities Exchange's share jumped to an intraday high of 18.00 shillings from its initial public offering price of 9.50 shillings, but reversed some of its gains to close at 16.30 shillings a share.

The main NSE-20 Share Index was up 14.09 points to close at 5,182.89 points.On the secondary market, government bonds valued at 2.71 billion shillings were traded, up from 1.39 billion on Monday. Read More

Mobile money business in Kenya nears Sh 2Tr mark

Mobile money transfer service providers moved close to Sh 2 trillion last year as the number of users and agents grew significantly, the latest data from Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows. The bank's financial stability report 2013 shows that the number of financial transactions through mobile phones reached a high of 733 million transactions valued at Sh 1.9 trillion in 2013 from 575 million transactions worth Sh 1.5 trillion in 2012...Read More

RBA revokes Laptrust licence over anomalies

The Retirement Benefits Authority has revoked the licence of Laptrust Administration Services, one of the largest administrators of pension schemes in Kenya. Laptrust is an offshoot of the giant Local Authorities Pensions Trust that holds pensions contributions and savings of more than 3,000 former employees of the defunct local government authorities — including current employees of county governments.

RBA is concerned about the relations and governance of the two entities, saying that although the pension scheme is a public entity created by a Gazette notice and subject to ministerial direction, its offshoot, Laptrust, is managed as if it were a private firm. [...]

 MPs postpone decision on Equity Bank's use of Thin SIM

Kenyan MPs said they will not make a decision on Equity Bank's use of the thin SIM and the security flaws raised by Safaricom about it, until after a meeting between Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) and the Central Bank of Kenya.

The committee was Tuesday supposed to meet Central Bank Governor Njuguna Ndung'u, but the Governor wrote a letter to MPs seeking more time, because he is out of the country. MPs said the decision on Equity Bank's roll-out will have to wait until they have heard from the CBK board and the CAK board. [...]