Large stocks at Kenya's bourse record gains

NAIROBI, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 large stocks at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) rose on Thursday, but trading was pulled down by the decline of Safaricom, which has the biggest capitalization at the bourse.

Safaricom, Kenya's leading telecom, declined 1.8 percent during the session to trade 0.25 U.S. dollars from a high of 0.26 dollars.

Large stocks whose prices rose by between 1 percent and 10 percent included Cooperative Bank, Athi River Mining Cement, Equity Bank, East African Breweries Ltd (EABL) and Kenya Power.

However, the decline of Safaricom weighed down the benchmark NSE 20 Share Index, which dipped 4.46 points to close at 3,706.37 points. Similarly, the NSE All share Index (NASI) was down 1.26 points to close at 172.88 points.

Safaricom, EABL, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), Kenya Power and Equity Bank accounted for 88 percent of the total turnover.

The most traded counters were Safaricom, Kenya Power, KCB, Equity Bank and KenolKobil, moving about 19.1 million, 6.2 million, 1.8 million, 1.3 million and 1.2 million shares respectively.

Equity turnover stood at 9.5 million dollars on a volume of 35.1 million shares, from 57 million worth 14 million dollars on Wednesday.

Foreign participation ended at 74 percent, up from 69 percent while local at 26 percent. On the other hand, bond turnover went up by 120 percent to close at 10 million dollars. Enditem