The government has reopened the M-Akiba bond targeting to raise 250 million shillings from Monday 25th February till 8th March 2019.
To counter under subscription witnessed in the last issuance, the government has put in place a multi sectoral agency comprising of among others the Capital Markets Authority, Nairobi securities exchange as well as the Central Depository and Settlement Corporation to spearhead financial literacy and marketing campaigns in the public domain to spur uptake.
M-Akiba was officially launched in March 2017 on a special offer aimed at testing the markets appetite that ended up raising 150 million shillings in a fortnight.
However in its second issue in June against a target of 1 billion shillings the June offer was under subscribed raising only 247 million shillings.
In its report Financial Sector Deepening – FSD Kenya, noted that key players in the issuance of the bond did not address the recommendations for the unbanked segment such as the preference for small denominations in purchasing the government security and maturity tenure in months not years.
In efforts to remedy this, the government will embark on a series of marketing and financial literacy programs to boost uptake of the bond.
The bond attracts a 10% interest as well as a commission rate of 0.1% of actual allocations for trading partners.
The bond will be traded on the Nairobi bourse via mobile phones on Tuesday 12th March 2019.