NAIROBI: Commercial banks quoted the Kenyan shilling at 88.60/70 to the dollar at 1300 GMT on Monday, the same as Friday's close, after it gained briefly during the session before reversing those gains, while stocks closed slightly higher.
Traders said they expected the shilling to trade in the 88.50 to 89.00 range in coming days and have a bias towards strengthening.
During the session it touched 88.30/40 to the dollar before reversing the gains.
Traders said the central bank mopped up 5.93 billion shillings earlier in the session, but this had little impact on the local currency. It had sought to mop up 8 billion shillings.
"I still think (dollar) supply is the issue," Julius Kiriinya, trader at African Banking Corporation, said.
Traders said the shilling's weakening had also been limited by slowing dollar demand.
Sheikh Mehran, head of trading at I&M Bank, said there was also an increase in central bank reserves. "So generally, the shilling might strengthen a bit," he added.
The central bank said in its latest weekly bulletin that official usable foreign exchange reserves rose to $6.377 billion in the week ending Sept. 4 from $6.257 billion a week before.
On the Nairobi Securities Exchange, the main NSE-20 Share Index was up by 8.48 points, or 0.2 percent, to close at 5,168.80 points.
On the secondary market, government bonds worth a total 1.38 billion shillings were traded compared with 1.6 billion shillings on Friday.
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