Kenyan shilling hits new three-year low, shares dip

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The Kenyan shilling weakened to a new three-year low on Friday as importers bought dollars to meet their end-month obligations, while Safaricom led shares lower. The shilling closed trading at 97.40/50 to the dollar - a new low last touched in Nov. 2011 - compared with Thursday's close of 97.00/10. Duncan Kinuthia, head of trading at Commercial Bank of Africa, said dollar demand was seen from the energy and manufacturing sectors that usually come in to the market to buy the U.S. currency towards the end of the month. Traders said the surge in dollar demand had curbed the impact of tight liquidity in the money markets, which was expected to offer support to the currency, by making it slightly more expensive to bet against the shilling. The weighted average interest rate on the overnight borrowing market for banks rose above 11 percent this week, indicating there was a liquidity squeeze. On the Nairobi Securities Exchange, the main NSE-20 Share index fell by 48.96 points, or 0.99 percent, to close at 4,879.95 points. Heavily-weighted telecoms firm Safaricom was down 0.6 percent to close at 16.20 shillings a share. Silha Rasugu, research analyst at Genghis Capital, said some investors were cashing in on the recent gains in Safaricom's shares after it posted robust full-year earnings. "It's a trading pattern; after earnings you see a lot of (investors), they go to the other side of the trade. You are now closing the gains you have made in the run-up to your earnings; it's a minor correction," he said. Rasugu said there was also a sell-off by investors in other stocks after closure of their books ahead of dividend payments. On the secondary market, government bonds worth 114.4 million shillings ($1 million) were traded, up from 98.6 million shillings on Thursday. ...........................Shilling spot rates .....................Shilling forward rates .......................Cross rates ..................................Local contributors .......................Central Bank of Kenya Index .....................Kenyan Bonds contributor pages ...............Treasury bill yields ..................Central bank open market operations .........................Horizontal repo transactions ,................Daily interbank lending rate .............................Kenya Bond pricing ..................Real time Africa economic data ...........................African economic news .................................NSE-20 Share Index .................................NSE All Share Index ...........................FT NSE Kenya 15 Index .......................... FT NSE Kenya 25 Index SPEED GUIDES: ($1 = 97.2000 Kenyan shillings)