Kenyan Shilling suffers one of its steepest declines in history

<span>Kenyan shilling notes</span>, <p>Consumers now pay a high price for imported products as a result of the Kenyan shilling's costliest freefalls in history, which saw it lose over half of its value trading against the US dollar in less than 50 months.</p>, <p>The Kenyan shilling is under pressure due to some commercial banks in Nairobi already selling US dollars beyond the Sh150 threshold, preparing customers for a new round of currency-driven price rises on imported goods including fertilizers, electronics, and vehicles.</p>, <p>The dollar conversion rate at I&M and Sidian Bank has surpassed Sh150, according to a spot check by the Business Daily (a Kenyan business news publication) on Monday afternoon, as the nation struggled with a lack of foreign currency.</p>, <p>The Business Daily evaluated three forex bureaus and 11 banks in Nairobi, and the average selling price for the dollar was rapidly approaching the Sh150 threshold.</p>, <p>The average exchange rate, according to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), was Sh142.98, a significant difference from the actual trade on the ground as reported by forex dealers.</p>, <p>The dollar was trading between Sh146.7 and Sh149.1 for the other nine banks as the shilling weakened despite the government's efforts to stop the devaluation. Although a teller informed us that the tier 3 lender was purchasing dollars at Sh134.9 and selling them at Sh150.9, the Sidian Bank branch we visited did not post forex values on the exchange rate board.</p>, <p>This indicates that of the 12 forex dealers we selected, Sidian Bank, owned by Centum Investment, had the largest spread with a net margin of Sh15.1.</p>, <p>A dollar fetched Sh152.9 at I&M, Sh149 at Standard Chartered Bank, and Sh148.9 at KCB. At Cooperative Bank and Stanbic, the exchange rate was at Sh148.5 and Sh147 respectively. Absa was selling the dollar at Sh147.18 and DTB at Sh146.7. All three forex bureaus that we sampled were selling dollars at an average of Sh145.</p>, <p>Recent contributions from development partners, s