(Xinhua) -- Equity trading at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) on Thursday dropped to lowest level since the start of the year as foreign investors kept off the bourse.
Some 8.7 million shares valued at 1.8 million U.S. dollars were traded, down from 27 million valued at 8.5 million dollars posted Wednesday.
The slowest trading session at the bourse since the beginning of the year was in April, where some 2.4 million dollars was clocked from a volume of 10 million shares.
The banking sector had 2.5 million shares traded from 13.5 million Wednesday; representing 30 percent of the day's traded volume. Co-op Bank was the most heavily traded counter in this sector, with 1.1 million shares changing hands at 0.40 dollars.
Kenya's leading telecom Safaricom had 3.4 million shares traded at 0.17 dollars, down from 7 million shares at the same price in the previous trading session.
Commercial and services sector moved 1.1 million shares, which accounted for 13 percent of the day's traded volume.
In the category, ScanGroup was unchanged at 0.21 dollars and moved 583,000 shares while Kenya Airways moved 455,000 shares at a fairly stable price of 0.04 dollars.
The energy and petroleum sector had 565,000 shares traded, with KenGen rights actively moving 9.5 million rights at 0.001 U.S. cents.
The drop in trading saw the NSE 20 Share Index shave off 40.59 points or 1.04 percent to settle at 3,871.74 while the All Share Index (NASI) edged 0.49 points lower to settle at 145.78 and the NSE 25 Share Index was down 28.58 points to stand at 4,183.88.
The bond market had bonds worth 43 million dollars transacted, down from 60 million dollars in the previous trading session.
