Bank, telecom shares push up trading at Nairobi bourse

Equity turnover at the Nairobi bourse more than doubled to about 9.9 million U.S. dollars Tuesday buoyed by the sale of banking and telecommunication sector shares.

The turnover rose to 8.9 million dollars from 4.1 million dollars Monday with the number of shares traded hitting 34 million against 8.3 million.

Equity Bank and Safaricom were responsible for the strong performance as their number of shares traded increased considerably.

Safaricom was the day's biggest mover with 18 million shares changing hands at between 0.16 and 0.17 dollars, up from 3.3 million on Monday.

Equity Group Holdings, on the other hand, had 6.9 million shares changing hands at 0.40 dollars and 0.41 dollars.

The banking sector, in general, had 11.7 million shares traded and represented 34 percent the day's traded volume.

Insurance sector was another big mover, trading 1.3 million shares or 4.1 percent of the day's traded volume.

Britam Holdings added 9.3 percent to yesterday's gain of 9.2 percent to settle at 0.13 dollars moving 467,000 shares.

The commercial and services sector had 759,000 shares traded, representing 2.2 percent of the day's traded volume.

Construction and allied sector had 450,000 shares traded and represented 1.3 percent of the day's traded volume.

The energy and petroleum sector moved 854,000 shares, which accounted for 2.5 percent of the day's traded volume.

Following the increased trading, the NSE 20 Share Index was up 8.14 points to stand at 4016.64.

However, as Monday, the All Share Index shed 0.15 points to stand at 146.73 and The NSE 25 Share Index was down 0.42 points to settle at 4232.60. Enditem