Weekly Commentary – 25th March 2022

Foreign Exchange Reserves

The CBK’s usable foreign exchange reserves remained adequate at USD 7,856 million (4.80 months of import cover). This meets CBK’s statutory requirement to endeavor to maintain at least 4.0-months of import cover, and the EAC region’s convergence criteria of 4.5-months of import cover.

Currency

The Kenyan Shilling depreciated against the Dollar and the Sterling Pound. However, it gained against the Euro. The observed overall depreciation against the Dollar is attributable to increased Dollar demand from energy and commodity importers.

	Week Before	Week After
Dollar	114.38	114.69
Euro	126.40	125.94
Sterling Pound	150.45	151.3

Liquidity

Liquidity in the money markets tightened, due to the government’s higher receipts compared to payments. Open market operations remained active.

	Week Before	Week After
Interbank rate	4.30%	4.29%
Interbank volume (billion)	17.23	10.88
Commercial banks’ excess reserves (billion)	22.20	17.60

Fixed Income

T-Bills

T-Bills remained under-subscribed during the week with a decline in subscription rate compared to the previous week. Overall decline is attributable to concurrent bonds in the primary bond market.

T-Bill	Yield (% Rate)		Subscription Rate
	Week Before	Week After	Week Before	Week After
Overall			82.83%	55.76%
91 day	7.25%	7.28%	49.46%	57.99%
182 day	8.09%	8.13%	82.38%	38.42%
364 day	9.76%	9.77%	96.62%	72.19%

T-Bonds

The bonds market had a lower demand for the week’s bond offers. Bonds turnover declined by 31.0% to 18.53B down from 26.86B in the previous week.

The 5, 15 and 25 year Treasury bond tap sale received bids worth Ksh 24.9B against the targeted 31.5B translating to a 79% performance.

In the primary bond market, the Central Bank issued two bonds; FXD1/2022/03 and FXD1/2022/15. The Government sought to raise Ksh 40B from the 3-year bond and Ksh 30B from the 15- year bond for budgetary support.

In the international market, yields on Kenya’s Eurobonds rose by an average of 44.73 basis points. The yields on the 10-year Eurobonds for Angola increased, while that for Ghana decreased.

Equities

NASI, NSE 20 and NSE 25 increased by 2.26%, 0.04% and 1.12% respectively. Market capitalization also increased by 2.26% to 2.499 trillion. The performance was driven by gains recorded by large-cap stocks. Top gains were recorded in Diamond Trust Bank, Stanchart, NCBA and Safaricom which increased by 1.0%, 1.10%, 1.30% and 3.0% respectively.

The Banking sector had shares worth Kshs 1.4B transacted which accounted for 62.36% of the week’s traded value, Manufacturing & Allied sector had shares worth 255M transacted which represented 10.99% and Safaricom, with shares worth 584M transacted represented 25.16% of the week’s traded value.

Top Losers	W-o-W
Home Africa	-8.11%
TP Serena	-6.37%
BOC Kenya	-5.88%
Uchumi	-4.55%
Car and General	-4.11%

Alternative Investments

	Week Before	Week After	% Change
Derivatives Turnover (million)	3.63	1.50	-58.69%
Derivatives Contracts	11	15	36.36%
I-REIT Turnover	0.16	0.52	224.21%
I-REIT Deals	35	46	31.43%

Global and Regional Markets

Global Markets	W-o-W
S&P 500	1.79%
Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI)	0.31%
FTSE 100 (FTSE)	1.06%
STOXX Europe 600	-0.23%
Shanghai Composite (SSEC)	-1.19%
MSCI Emerging Markets	1.24%
MSCI World Index	1.03%

Continental Markets	W-o-W
FTSE ASEA Pan African Index	-1.39%
JSE All Share	-1.02%
NSE All Share (NGSE)	-0.67%
DSEI (Tanzania)	-0.36%
ALSIUG (Uganda)	-0.66%

U.S stocks closed the week mixed, as gains in the Oil & Gas, Utilities and Financials sectors led shares higher while losses in the Technology, Consumer Services and Healthcare sectors led shares lower. Globally, stocks went up as investors turned net buyers after selling the stocks in the previous week following concerns over inflation and geopolitical tensions.

European stocks closed the week mixed as investors cautiously monitored the Russia-Ukraine crisis. A further decline was supported by the rally in the commodity sector. With demands from Russia that payments for natural gas exports should be made in roubles, the United States has rolled out a plan to supply liquefied natural gas to the European Union to counter any shortages that may arise.

Asia Pacific stocks closed the week low with investors continuing to calculate the resilience of the global economic recovery to risks from both a tighter U.S. Federal Reserve monetary policy and the conflict in Ukraine.

On the global commodities markets, Crude Oil WTI closed the week higher by 7.23% and the ICE Brent Crude increased by 10.45%. Gold futures prices increased by 1.88% to settle at $1,957.75.

Week’s Highlights

• According to an analysis by the Investment Bank EFG Hermes, investors earn an average annual return of 12 percent which ranks Kenya’s stock market lowest among 15 other frontier markets in terms of returns above the risk free government securities. This follows a week after a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) indicated that Kenya recorded the worst performance in stock listings among African countries in terms of initial public offerings (IPO). The poor rating reflects the market’s recurrent bear run, reduced profits and losses made by the listed firms.

• Kenya’s economy is expected to stabilize at 6 per cent in 2022 boosted by a strong performance in the second and third quarters of the 2021 fiscal year and remittances from the diaspora. The chairman of the National Development Implementation Coordination and Communication Committee (NDICC) noted an expected accelerated economic recovery as deductible from macroeconomic indicators. Additionally, he noted a significant impact that the Russia-Ukraine crisis would have especially on the supply chain of imports and exports.

• The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) had downgraded Kenya to a level one travel health notice from the previous level three; a move that is expected to boost the tourism and hospitality industry. This follows from the lower infection rates observed and lifting of the mask mandate. There is a 18.5% projected increase in revenue from the tourism sector up to Sh 173 billion in 2022.

• The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) announced the publication of CBK (Digital Credit Providers) regulations that aims at regulating the activities of the lenders. Consequently, CBK has issued a six months’ notice for the lenders to apply for licensing or cease operations. The law seeks to address predatory practices and abuse of personal information by the lenders.

• The 90 million market population Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is set to be the seventh country to join the East Africa Community (EAC) on 29th, March 2022. DRC is a key African market for Kenyan companies with a Sh 14.3 billion export earning in 2020. This will increase the current EAC market population to 183 million.

• The speaker of the National Assembly declared the expected delivery of the national budget unconstitutional unless the Division of Revenue Bill, 2022 is passed by parliament. The Treasury cabinet secretary is expected to read the Sh 3.31 trillion budget on April 7th. Currently, Senate is yet to pass the Bill.

• 1,291 Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises(MSMEs) received Ksh 2.11 billion from banks through the state-run Credit Guarantee Scheme(CGS) in 2021. This fell short of the targeted minimum of Ksh 12 billion in the 2020/2021 budget allocation.