According to the Central Bank of Kenya’s weekly report the interbank rate, the cost at which commercial banks borrow from one another, increased to 19.31% up from 15.41% the previous week. This is attributed to tight liquidity due to tax payments being made by corporations. To understand how this affects the rate, read: Interbank Rate keeps Rising.
The Kenya Shilling in turn marginally depreciated against the major world currencies. During the week the Kenya Shilling depreciated by 0.05%, 1.32% and 0.64% against the US dollar, the Sterling Pound and the Euro, respectively, to trade at an average of KES 83.23 per US dollar, KES 134.18 per Sterling Pound and KES 109.72 per Euro, compared with KES 83.19 per US dollar, KES 132.43 per Sterling Pound and KES 109.72 per Euro during the week ending April 19, 2012.
During the week ended 27th April the government auctioned Treasury Bills and Bonds worth KES 9 billion and accepted KES 12.7 billion of the KES 38.3 billion shillings worth of bids received. For the Treasury bills the weighted average rate stood at 16.623%, 0.015% lower than the rate observed at last week’s auction while the weighted average yield on the Treasury bond stood at 13.826%, this is much lower than the 22.844% observed at the last auction of a Treasury bond in November 2011.For more on this read: Yield on Treasury Bonds Falls by 39.5%.
Stock performance was mixed as the gains made by some market indicators were somewhat offset by the decline of others. The NSE 20-share index gained 22.86 points to 3,557.13 while the All-share index rose by 0.98 points to 77.12. The number of share traded during the week stood at 130.28 million down from 159.92 million shares a week earlier. During the week Safaricom, Equity Bank and Mumias Sugar Co. Ltd were the top three most active counters with 52.12 million, 23.07 million and 10.51 million shares traded, respectively. Of the 54 listed companies, 8 had average price declines in the week, implying overall price gain for the market.