NAIROBI: The Kenyan shilling was steady on Tuesday, supported by a second straight day of central bank action in the money market as demand for dollars from importers picked up, while stocks closed higher, helped by the listing of the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
On its first day of trading, demutualised Nairobi Securities Exchange's share jumped to an intraday high of 18.00 shillings from its initial public offering price of 9.50 shillings, but reversed some of its gains to close at 16.30 shillings a share.
NSE's flotation raised 627 million shillings from the sale of 66 million new shares, with the issue oversubscribed by 664 664 percent.
"NSE has enjoyed significant volumes thus far ... Demand has been high," said Silha Rasugu, research analyst at Genghis Capital, said.
"Due to the oversubscription, the appetite for the stock was already existing. So that's one factor that has really influenced trading today."
The main NSE-20 Share Index was up 14.09 points to close at 5,182.89 points.
At close of trade at 1300 GMT, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 88.60/70, unchanged from Monday's close.
The central bank mopped up 5 billion shillings of excess liquidity. It received bids for 8.91 billion shillings. On Monday it had absorbed 5.93 billion shillings. Such operations make it more expensive to hold dollars.
"I think the shilling is still under pressure with the global dollar rally. So it's just a matter of time before it feeds through to the local market over here," said a senior trader at another commercial bank.
On global markets, the dollar hit a 14-month high against the euro.
Traders said there was also still demand for dollars from importers, and expected the shilling, which has lost 2.3 percent versus the dollar so far this year, to trade in the 88.50 to 88.85 range in coming days.
On the secondary market, government bonds valued at 2.71 billion shillings were traded, up from 1.39 billion on Monday.
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