Kenyan telecom giant pushes up trading at Nairobi stock market

Equity turnover at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) went up 28 percent on Monday to 5.63 million U.S. dollars supported by increased trading of Safaricom shares.

The telecom giant moved 13 million shares from the previous trading session's 10.8 million as it held onto the biggest mover top spot, which it had lost last week.

Trading of the stock surged following a 0.6 percent rise in the share price from 0.16 dollars to 0.17 dollars. A total of 19.1 million shares were traded Monday from the previous 19.8 million shares.

Kenya Commercial Bank was the second biggest mover, trading 1.4 million shares but this was a drop from last Friday's 2 million shares.

Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) followed in the third place, trading 774,500 shares. The bank during the trading recorded the highest net foreign inflows of 1.6m dollars, in turn its shares going up by 1 percent to 2.1 dollars.

Following the increased trading, the NSE 20 share index gained 0.2 percent to close the day at 3,929.51 while the All Share Index increased with a similar margin to 146.31, mainly propped by the share price in Safaricom shares.

The biggest gainers at the market Monday included Home Afrik (9.4 percent), National Bank of Kenya (8.2 percent) and Britam (8.11 percent).

The worst performers were Uchumu Supermarket, whose share price went down by 10 percent to 0.5 dollars on a volume of 30,300.

The supermarket is facing management problems that have seen most of its branches outside the capital Nairobi closed.

Cooperative Bank was also among the bottom five performers, losing 4 percent to trade at 0.19 dollars, down from 0.21 dollars.

Foreign participation stood at 54 percent while bond turnover was up 90 percent to close at 11 million dollars.