{"id":6118,"date":"2019-10-24T09:13:28","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T06:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6118"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","slug":"rigid-shilling-takes-the-shine-off-kenyas-financial-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/24\/rigid-shilling-takes-the-shine-off-kenyas-financial-markets\/","title":{"rendered":"Rigid Shilling Takes The Shine Off Kenya\u2019s Financial Markets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Patrick\nAlushula<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kenya\u2019s\nmonetary policy is back in the spotlight after a new report showed that the\ncountry\u2019s foreign investment attraction ranking had stagnated comparative to its\nEast Africa peers amid concern about rigidity in currency movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\nAbsa Africa Financial Markets Index (AFMI) 2019 showed that Kenya retained\npositioned three with a score of 65 out of 100 points, placing it below leader\nSouth Africa and second placed Mauritius, which added 13 points to hit 75\npoints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And\nwhile Kenya stagnated, its neighbours Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda closed their\ngaps by gaining 12, four and three points respectively to storm into top 10\nspots. Tanzania climbed from position 15 to seven as Rwanda moved to 9th from\nprevious year\u2019s 11th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A\nreview of the ranking showed Kenya\u2019s woes largely stem from low sensitivity of\nits currency to market fundamentals \u2014 potentially pointing to interventions on\ncurrency positions by the Central Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And\nwhile Kenya improved its points in five of the six pillars used in ranking the\nattractiveness of markets, it lost 28 points in \u2018access to foreign exchange\u2019\npillar to close with 65 points. This saw it drop from last year\u2019s first\nposition in this pillar to fifth, beaten by South Africa, Egypt, Uganda and\nRwanda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\nAFMI 2019 report cited last year\u2019s move by International Monetary Fund (IMF) to\nreclassify the Kenyan shilling from \u2018floating\u2019 to \u2018other managed arrangement\u2019\nto reflect the currency\u2019s limited movement due to periodic intervention by\nCentral Bank of Kenya (CBK).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cKenya\ndrops in ranking (on forex pillar) after the IMF reclassified its exchange rate\nregime to \u2018other managed arrangement\u2019 from \u2018floating\u2019, a move the central bank\ncontests,\u201d said the report\u2026<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessdailyafrica.com\/datahub\/Rigid-shilling-takes-the-shine-off-Kenya\/3815418-5322114-vcp8pv\/index.html\">Read\nmore&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Patrick Alushula Kenya\u2019s monetary policy is back in the spotlight after a new report showed that the country\u2019s foreign investment attraction ranking had stagnated comparative to its East Africa&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}