Nairobi bourse index drops 34 points as foreign investors raise sales

The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) 20 Share Index went down 34 points Friday to close at 3,206 as foreign investors upped sales of several key stocks.

Foreign sales rose 54 percent Friday with East African Breweries Ltd (EABL), Safaricom, Equity Bank and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) topping list of stocks with high outflows.

Some 16 million shares worth 3.5 million U.S. dollars were traded during the session, down from 4 million dollars on a volume of 17 million shares Thursday.

The low trading, which characterized the four-day trading session, saw the total weekly turnover drop to 16 million dollars on a volume of 76 million shares, down from 42 million dollars on 170 million shares posted the previous week.

During the week, Kenya's leading telecom Safaricom moved 19 million shares (2.7 million Friday) at an average of 0.19 dollars.

In the banking sector, some 31 million shares were traded, which accounted for 41 percent of the week's traded volume.

The energy sector moved 5.5 million shares, which accounted for 7 percent of the week's traded volume, with regional oil marketer KenolKobil touching a high of 0.11 dollars on a volume of 2.6 million shares.

At the bond market, trading registered great improvement with securities worth 69 million dollars transacted compared to 43 million dollars registered in the previous week. Endit