The Bralirwa counter maintained the lead in the volume of shares traded on Rwanda Stock Exchange in the first half of this year, driven by its profitability and investors’ confidence.

Bralirwa share price hit Rwf890 mark, the highest since the lows of Rwf136 at the initial public offering two years ago.

Out of the over five million shares offered on RSE from January to June, the Bralirwa counter traded over four million shares in 80 deals compared with the slightly over one million shares traded on the Bank of Kigali counter in 37 deals.

Brokerage firms say there are always buyers and sellers of the Bralirwa shares, while investors in the Bank of Kigali — mainly big institutional investors — are holding on their stakes in the bank, keeping its share price low.

As of last week, the bank’s share was trading at Rwf180 yet it is the most liquid and profitable in the banking sector and its securities trading arm commands the biggest share of retail clientele.

However, Bank of Kigali does not take their critics lightly. “We obviously have got the biggest number of retail clients because of the trust and confidence that the retail clients have in both the BK Securities and the Bank,” said Bank of Kigali chief operating officer Lawson Naibo.

“We are not quick to advise clients to trade their shares since we are trying to develop a savings and investment culture. We try to bring as many customers to buy the shares as opposed to advising clients to sell when there is no buys,” he explained.

Bralirwa made a 2.41 per cent drop in profit in the first six months of this year but the revenues grew by 2.56 per cent to Rwf37.7 billion compared with Rwf36.08 billion in the same period last year.

The Bank of Kigali recorded a turnover of Rwf197 million compared with Bralirwa’s Rwf3.4 million.

During the same period, the performance of Nation Media Group and KCB remained minimal with the KCB counter trading a total 2,800 shares at Rwf490,000 while the Nation Media Group counter remained without activity.

Despite the low business on the cross-listed companies’ counters, equities trading on the Rwanda stock market hit a record high of 301.4 per cent turnover during the first half year of this year compared with the same period in 2012 driven by the Bralirwa and Bank of Kigali counters.

Investors’ confidence in the two companies is growing pushing the turnover to Rwf28 billion from 66 million shares traded compared with a turnover of Rwf7 billion traded in 45.2 million shares for the same period in 2012.

Celestine Rwabukumba, co-ordinator of RSE, attributes the growing trading on the stock market on the health of the economy.

Over the past five years, the GDP growth averaged 8.2 per cent annually, which translated into GDP per capita growth averaging 5.1 per cent per year. Now the country targets 11.5 per cent growth.