Turnover at Nairobi bourse falls as foreign outflows surge

Trading at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) slowed down Monday as foreign investors intensified sales with prices of some key stocks continuing to go down.

Kenya's leading telecom Safaricom, Equity Bank and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) were the top foreign sales.

While Safaricom and KCB are among key stocks whose prices tumbled marginally by between 0.6 and 0.8 percent, Equity Bank gained 0.6 percent but attracted the most foreign outflows.

Some 22 million shares valued at 6.5 million U.S. dollars were traded, down from 36 million valued at 11 million dollars posted last Friday.

Cumulatively, the banking sector had 13.3 million shares traded and represented 60 percent of the day's traded volume.

Equity Bank moved a total of 8 million shares at an average of 0.38 dollars while KCB had 5 million shares traded.

Safaricom, in the telecommunication sector, actively moved 6.4 million shares at an average of 0.17 dollars.

The energy and petroleum sector moved a million shares, with KenolKobil being the top trader under the category with 878,000 shares at 0.10 dollars.

The NSE 20 Share Index went down 19 points to stand at 3,633.98 while All Share Index shed 0.39 points to stand at 140.07 and the NSE 25 Share Index was down 6.40 points to settle at 3,958.16. Endit