Kenya Power Expects Annual Capital Expenditure to fall 16 Percent

Kenya Power, the country’s sole electricity distributor expects capital expenditure to fall 16 percent in its current financial year as it spends less on maintaining its grid.

The company said capital expenditure was likely to fall to 42 billion shillings or ($9.9 million) in its financial year to the end of June 2017 from 50 billion shillings a year earlier.

“We expect that as we increase access to connectivity, we will as well expand the network, but (expenditure) is not as high as the point where we were expanding the network, together with maintaining or refurbishing existing networks,” Ken Tarus, Kenya Power’s general manager for finance, told a briefing.

 On the Stock Market, the market showed mixed signals on Tuesday as all the indices fell while equity turnover revealed a slight uptrend.

The NSE 20 Share index dropped by 0.19 percent to 3242.46 points from 3248.54 points, while the NASI followed similarly to end at 139.80 points,0.49 percent lower.

The NSE 25 Share index decreased by 0.19 percent to close the day at 3680.71 points. Market capitalization declined by 0.49 percent to 2025.43 billion shillings from 2035.439 billion shillings previously.  Equity turnover increased to 0.72 billion shillings from 0.45 billion shillings on Monday owing to a rise in the volume of shares traded.

The Kenya shilling on the other hand strengthened albeit slightly against all the major currencies notably the USD, the GBP and the Euro.

The shilling gained value against the USD by 0.04 percent to 101.62, as US voting continues to elect the next 45^th President with Donald Trump being on the lead. Markets have made no secret that they would prefer a steady head of continuation in the top office in the World’s largest economy.

The shilling added value across the basket by 0.85 percent and 0.47 percent against the GBP and the Euro to close at 125.90 and 112.27 respectively.

Last week was the best week the Pound has had vs the US Dollar since October of 2009, as worries over the proposed ‘Hard Brexit’ eased. Fears eased as England’s High Court ruled last Thursday that the Government needs parliamentary approval before starting the Brexit process, and the Pound has boosted across the board off the back this news after having a particularly difficult October.

(THE INFORMATION IS FROM KINGDOM SECURITIES)