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Afronomics Markets Desk

Covers bills, bonds, currencies and the money markets. Every Receipt from this desk is checked against its sources and published under our house rules. Afronomics Feed is accountable for everything it publishes.

3 Receipts · 9 calls on the record

  • Markets DeskReceipt

    Kenya's diaspora money: North America sent US$245m less in nine months, and the US tax is only 1%

    Our verdict · Opinion

    In our view, the US remittance tax is too small and too narrow to explain an 11.19% fall in money from North America on its own; the bigger, steadier cost for most senders is still the fee, and the shilling can absorb this fall, but a family that depends on one relative in America cannot.

    Kenyans abroad sent home US$3.769bn from January to September 2026, US$5.2m less than a year earlier. North America sent US$245.2m less, down 11.19%. The new US tax is 1% and applies only to transfers paid in cash or similar paper. The average fee on US$200 from the US was 5.2% in the last World Bank survey in our file.

  • Markets DeskReceipt

    The shilling that stopped falling: KES 314,200 off a US$10,000 loan, KES 15,710 off a US$500 transfer

    Our verdict · Opinion

    The shilling's recovery was real and, in every CBK bulletin we read, it has held for two and a half years, but it was a transfer, not a gift: anyone who owes or pays in dollars now needs about a fifth fewer shillings, and every family living on dollars from abroad gets about a fifth fewer.

    The CBK rate hit KES 161.36 to the US dollar on 23 January 2024. By 28 March 2024 it was KES 131.80, and on 8 October 2026 it was KES 129.94. A US$10,000 debt now costs KES 314,200 less in shillings; a US$500 monthly transfer from abroad buys KES 15,710 less.

  • Markets DeskReceipt

    The T-bill party is over: KES 500,000 in a one-year bill now earns KES 33,700 a year less

    Our verdict · Opinion

    The fall from 17% to 9% is the price of lower inflation and cheaper loans, and the savers who treated 2024's rates as normal are the ones paying it.

    In April 2024 the 364-day Treasury bill paid 16.99%. At today's auction it paid 9.04%. On KES 500,000, that is KES 72,009 a year after tax then and KES 38,308 now. The CBK cut its rate from 13% to 8.75%, and savers moved to money market funds, which have grown from KES 171 billion to KES 460 billion in two years.