N.S.E has been ranked as the worst performing exchange in the world! In the world! Worse than that of countries that we see every day in the media for all the wrong reasons. You will ask, aren’t we also in the news for all the wrong reasons? Yes, we are. But yetu si mbaya vile! Hmm? Maybe, maybe not. This is the fourth time the Nairobi bourse has been ranked the worst performing in the last eight weeks.
According to Standard Investment Bank in a weekly market wrap report, all N.S.E benchmark indices have been in the red for the last five consecutive weeks. The reason is very obvious for those not living under a rock. The huge uncertainty caused by repeat elections that we are to have in two days. Johnson Nderi, manager for corporate finance and advisory at ABC Capital told the Business Daily that:
“There are more foreigners exiting than locals. They are bargaining that things could get worse,”
Capital Economists said in a report last week that Kenya could be headed for violence like that witnessed after the December 2007 presidential elections that left more than 1,200 people dead and hundreds of thousands of others internally displaced. The chaos also caused massive disruptions to the economy – both locally and regionally.
Such is the situation in our country that most bets are that we are heading into a bloodbath. All I can hope for as a Kenyan is that all these predictions fail to materialize. That is all.
