EA currencies stability continues

East African state currencies continue depicting boldness against US dollar on support of end month corporates demand. The currencies—especially for Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya—demonstrated trading stability as demand for local units surged from multinational firms that wanted to settle various end month and quarter obligations.

Also the regional local units were backed by agro-inflows and central banks’ monetary actions. Tanzania shilling Tanzanian shilling, the second biggest economy in the region, traded flat with modest demand from corporates.

“We saw moderate demand from corporates on today’s trading session due to month end obligations,” NMB Bank said in a statement yesterday. The commercial banks quoted the shilling at 2230/2270 against the green back.

Another bank, CRDB said the market experienced matching supply and demand for the pair but some pressure was still faced on the right hand side. “We expect this pressure to ease up due to central bank intervention and as well as the incoming cashew-nut season,” CRDB said.

Ugandan shilling Ugandan shilling has inched up on flows from charities and helped by some typical end of month hard currency inflows from non-governmental organisations and coffee exporters.

Last Friday, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 3,597/3,607, compared with Thursday’s close of 3,600/3,610. Kenyan shilling Kenyan shilling eased against the dollar last Friday due to dollar from some multinational companies, traders quoted saying.

The shilling of the largest economy in the bloc was quoted by commercial banks at103.15/35 per dollar, compared with 103.20/40 at Thursday’s close. It was reported also that traders were assessing the level of hard currency demand from importers to figure out its potential direction.

Rwandese franc The Rwandan franc relatively remained unchanged at 846.18 yesterday compared to a last Monday 845.45. The stability was attributed to Rwanda’s foreign exchange reserves that kept the franc stable against the other foreign currencies, National Bank of Rwanda said.

The franc exchange rate has continued to stabilize against the US dollars after depreciated merely by 1.8 percent between last December and this August compared to 8.0 percent observed in the same period of 2016.

The central bank said the eased in exchange rate pressures was mainly due to the improvement in export receipts, in line with rising commodity prices , and the decline in the import bill due to the phasing out of big construction projects and increased domestic production of some items, such as cement.

Burundian franc The Burundian franc(BIF) in weekly basis depreciated slightly form 1763.48last Monday to 1765.03 of yesterday against US dollar. However, due to forex scarcity the franc was exchanged at around 2,800 BIF against greenback at black markets.