Vibrant local investors lift Kenyan bourse turnover

NAIROBI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- An upswing in volumes of shares traded lifted the turnover at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) on Thursday in a session dominated by locals at 53 percent.

Turnover stood at 9.9 million U.S. dollars on a volume of 29 million shares from 26.1 million worth 9.2 million dollars on Wednesday.

The market was driven by banking, telecommunication, and manufacturing and allied sectors, with stocks accounting for 92 percent of total turnover.

The NSE 20 Share Index was down 21.11 points to close at 3,719.86 while the NSE All share Index (NASI) was down 0.89 points to end at 181.27 points. NSE 25 was down 12.58 points to close at 4,614.33.

Safaricom moved 10.4 million shares to emerge top traded stock, followed by Equity Bank at 5.4 million shares. The rest of the top movers were Kenya Commercial Bank, Cooperative Bank and Scangroup trading around 3.1 million, 3 million and 1.6 million shares respectively.

Bond turnover went up by 47 percent to stand at 27 million dollars from 18 million on Wednesday. Enditem