Kwacha extends gain

THE Kwacha extended its gains against the United States (US) dollar on Wednesday as sellers of the greenback dominated the market, Zanaco Bank has said.
According to a Zanaco newsletter published yesterday, the market opened with the Kwacha trading at K5.39 / K5.41 which was half a Ngwee higher than its closing on Tuesday.
“It continued to build on this momentum in intraday trading supported by corporate dollar in-flows and selling on the local interbank market.
“The local currency closed trading up Three Ngwee at K5.36 / K5.38 and looked set to settle around these levels having traded above the K5.40 mark in the last two months,” Zanaco said.
A firm Kwacha is expected in the near-term with support for the local currency probable from continued corporate dollar selling and kwacha demand ahead of Friday’s bond auction.
The newsletter said market liquidity has recently remained reasonably high, seeing the banks aggregate current account balance touch K 1, 265.5 million from the previous day’s K 1, 235.8 million.
“The amount of funds traded by commercial banks conspicuously decreased to K 135.0 million from K 207.0 million and the weighted average interbank lending rate marginally dropped to 11 per cent from 11.09 per cent.
Meanwhile, Copper fell on Wednesday as the dollar rose and as nervousness over a potential US-led military strike against Syria made investors more adverse to risk, while concerns over excessive copper supply in China also weighed.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME) closed at US$7,290 a tonne, after peaking at $7,352.50 earlier in the session, from $7,315 at the close on Tuesday.