THE-STAR.CO.KE Monday, October 2, 2017 14

NEWS BUSINESS

VICTOR AMADALA / Cash-strapped Nakumatt Holding is closing its Junction Mall branch, it was announced in a public notice yesterday.

According to a notice patched on the retailer’s door, it has relinquished its rights over the premises pursuant to a surrender dated September 15 this year.

‘’! e premises will be closed to the public from October 1 and no trading will be permitted at the premises.

Nakuamtt’s directors and authorised agents and employees will however be permitted

access for the purpose of removing stock and other property,’’ read the notice.

! e closure of ! e Junction Mall branch is barely two weeks after the retailer suspended activities at the ! ika Road Mall and a month after closing the Nextgen Mall branch along Mombasa Road.

Although the management did not give reasons for closure, speculation is rife that the retailer can no longer aff ord tenancy at the mall. Eff orts to reach Nakumatt’s managing director Atul Shah for comment were not successful.

Nakumatt’s woes seem far from over, even

after details of its merger with Tuskys leaked to the public two weeks ago.

! e two retailers are said to have signed a deal that could see Nakuamtt access stock from suppliers using Tuskys supermarkets’ goodwill and value chain.

Even so, Yusuf Mugweru, one of the directors at Tuskys supermarket, is said to have rejected the deal on Wednesday last week.

Nakumatt is struggling to pay massive debts owed to suppliers estimated at Sh15 billion, a situation that has been piling pressure on its operations.

RETAIL WOES

CASH TRANFERS

Mobile payment for goods up 71 per cent

EXPERT COMMENTALY KHAN SATCHU

Living in a populist world

An employee as-sists a customer to set-up the M-Pesa money transfer servive on his handset inside a mobile phone care centre operated by Safaricom in Nairobi, 2016/ REUTERS

Sh692.1 billion -57.68 per cent of the Sh1.2 trillion worth of 480.5 million mobile cash transfers- were through commerce platforms

More than half the money sent through mobile phones between April and June this year went to paying for goods and services, fresh offi cial data have shown.

Statistics by the Communications Authority of Kenya indicate that Sh692.1 billion -57.68 per cent of the Sh1.2 trillion worth of 480.5 million mobile money transfers- were through commerce platforms, driven by the in-dustry whose current mobile subscrip-tion hit 40 million during the period.

" is was a 71.27 per cent increase from Sh404.1 billion transacted during the same period last year. Safaricom took the bulk of the share where M-Pe-sa accounted for 66.72 per cent of the mobile commerce transactions valued at Sh461.82 billion, the CA quarterly re-

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Nakumatt Holdings woes deepen as Junction Mall branch closed

“Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’’ is an early study of crowd psychology by Charles Mackay, fi rst

published in 1841.“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be

seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

Populism, populists, populist policy making and ex-traordinary popular delusions have in fact been around a very long time. Among the bubbles or fi nancial manias described by Mackay are the South Sea Company bubble of 1711–1720, the Mississippi Company bubble of 1719–1720, and the Dutch tulip mania of the early seventeenth century. According to Mackay, during this bubble, speculators from all walks of life bought and sold tulip bulbs and even futures contracts on them. Allegedly, some tulip bulb varieties briefl y became the most expensive objects in the world during 1637.

A wave of populism has crisscrossed the world. As we scan the world today, we can confi rm a populist has captured the White House. In the United Kingdom, populism saw BREXIT win its referendum and was best described by David Osler thus,

‘’I’m going to cancel Netfl ix and negotiate with each fi lm producer separately, to get the best deal for me and my family #Brexit’’

President Putin is of course the arch populist but Erdogan, Duterte, Narendra Modi are all Mini-Mes to Vladimir. Populist policy-making reminded me of a passage from T.S Eliot’s ! e Hollow Men;

Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motion And the actFalls the shadowFor thine is the kingdom Between the conceptionAnd the creation Between the emotion And the responseFalls the shadowLife is very longBetween the desireAnd the spasm Between the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the shadowFor thine is the kingdom

! e shadow to which T S Eliot is referring is this; President Trump’s tax cut is presented as good for the average American taxpayer but it patently is skewed in favour of the 1 per cent. Narendra Modi’s attempt to cleanse the black-market economy via the extingui-shing of banknotes was an abject failure. Duterte’s ‘’red in tooth and claw’’ assassination program against drug dealing has trampled over any human rights. ! e king of Saudi Arabia has generously allowed women to drive themselves around from 2018. 2018 just let that sink in.

President Trump in his mind-boggling speech said this of Venezuela

‘’! e problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented’’ change the word ‘’socialism’’ for ‘’Populism’’ and in fact Caracas is the harbinger of the direction in which the world is headed.

I will leave the last words to Charles Mackay:“Of all the off spring of time, error is the most ancient,

and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intru-der, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”

Aly-Khan is a fi nancial analyst

port showed. " is was however a drop compared to the same period last year, when the giant telco controlled 79.96 per cent of commerce transactions val-ued at Sh323.18 billion. Equitel, the mo-bile money product from Equity Bank, came in second, accounting for 32.33 per cent of the total mobile commerce cash valued at Sh228.05 billion. " is is a jump from 17.34 per cent market share the platform held the same period last year, valued at Sh70.09 billion.

Struggling Airtel came in a distant third with the fi rm’s share at 0.33 per cent of transactions valued at Sh2.28 billion. " is was a drop compared to last year, when its mobile commerce trans-actions accounted for 2.69 per cent val-ued at Sh10.89 billion. Orange Money and Mobikash cumulatively processed transactions valued under Sh10 mil-lion. " e regulator did not publish the value of transactions through Mobile-Pay.

As at June 30, the total number of ac-tive mobile money subscriptions stood at 28.07 million while the number of agents was registered at 180,657. " e CA data show that subscriptions grew 6.73 per cent from 26.3 million registered last year, while the number of agents grew 13.82 per cent from 158,727.

Users of the dominant M-Pesa rose by 32.13 per cent to 22.62 million sub-scribers from 17.12 million recorded last year. M-Pesa processed transac-tions valued at Sh903.64 billion in the three months ending June, about 75.3 per cent of the total value transacted. During the period, Airtel Money sub-scriptions more than halved, dropping 68.45 per cent to 1.53 million users from 4.85 million recorded last year. " e platform processed 2.19 million transactions valued at Sh3.14 billion.

Equitel transactions were valued at Sh311.82 billion processed through its 1.86 million subscribers.

CYNTHIA ILAKO@LadyKanyali