Kenyan shilling holds steady, shares inch up

NAIROBI: 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.