Kenyan stock market rejoiced over return of foreign fund managers

The automation of trading at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) has attracted increased business transactions and wooed back international fund managers who left the country when the economy dwindled in 2000, regulators said here on Friday

Chege Waruingi, chairman of the Capital Markets Authority which is the regulator of the capital market, said that the successful implementation of the Central Depository System has made Nairobi a focal point for international portfolio investors.

"The modernization of market infrastructure has become a critical benchmark for attracting foreign capital which for us is important in supplementing low domestic savings and assuring potential issuers of availability and accessibility of funds," he said.

The NSE has 51 companies listed but the number of local investors is just picking up after the last two new Initial Public Offers, one by the Kenyan government and the other by a conglomerate of media buying and marketing firms Scangroup.

The automated trading system has seen the removal of paper certificates and the introduction of electronic accounts, easing the difficulty of transferring shares and equity from one buyer to the next within a period of 24 hours.

The market is currently struggling with the implementation of an Automated Trading system covering the whole East African region, although the system has been rolled out in Nairobi despite a few glitches which temporarily caused fears on its stability.

Source: Xinhua