Kenya Shilling Strengthens as Tea and Coffee Receipts Improve

Kenya’s shilling strengthened against the U.S. dollar as increased sales of the country’s main agricultural crops boost foreign-currency supplies.

The currency of East Africa’s biggest economy gained as much as 0.5 percent to 81.05 per dollar and was trading at 81.45 shillings at 2:33 p.m. in Nairobi, the capital, today, unchanged from yesterday.

The shilling “strengthened against the dollar due to the strong inflows from tea and coffee following strong sales of tea after calm returned to Egypt, the main buyer of Kenya’s tea,” Steve Lagat, a dealer at Nairobi-based CFC Stanbic Bank, said in a phone interview today.

African tea prices rose for the first week in four, climbing 3.3 percent to an average of $2.79 kilogram at a weekly sale in Mombasa, Kenya, Tea Brokers East Africa Ltd. said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Political unrest in Egypt, which led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, weakened the shilling as demand for tea in the North African country declined.

(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-16/kenya-shilling-strengthens-as-tea-and-coffee-receipts-improve.html)