The Nairobi Securities Exchanges (NSE) has come out to defend itself against claims that the local bourse is the worst performing globally.

While faulting a recent Bloomberg article, NSE said the publication based its story on the decline of NSE All Share index ignoring other parameters like the float adjustments, dividend yields and comparative peer market reviews, that investors consider before making investment decisions.  

The NSE maintained that the 72 percent increase in profit after tax recorded in the first half of the year, shows that the situation is not as portrayed by Bloomberg.

 “Whilst the NSE respects Bloomberg's commitment to providing financial news, we believe the article did not provide a holistic view of Kenya’s public capital markets and placed a special bias on one market parameter, that is, the NSE All Share Index, and failing to consider other critical factors,” NSE said in a statement.

The review by Bloomberg comes on the back of an assessment undertaken by FTSE Russell on August 11, 2023, seeking  to review the treatment of the equity indices of Kenya and other exchanges in the frontier markets.

According to NSE, FTSE Russell retained Kenya in its index whilst removing some frontier exchanges, which reflects an appreciation of the markets structure and performance as well as the markets viability to attract foreign investors.

In addition, the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) in its August 2023 review of Kenya, noted that the market dividend yield stood at 8.63% compared to 4.28% for the peer average group of stocks exchanges in the MSCI Frontier Markets Index.

“As players in the global financial ecosystem, the performance of listed securities on the NSE is impacted by various macro-economic factors which have seen global equity markets experience significant pressure over the last few months,” the statement read.