22 Nairobi Star Monday, 12 November 2007

Up to date, accuratebusiness information

NEWS YoU CaN USE, EVErY DaY.Star biZ

I meet so many people here whose time horizon is extremely short. they become disillusioned and despondent very quickly when the market does not react immediately.

When I worked in Lon-don, I had a fellow at my desk whose main job was to trade very short term. this trading style is called ‘scalping’. You are doing high velocity trades and taking a shilling here and a shilling there. Now unless you are right at the epi-centre of the trading flow, there is no point investing on this basis because it is you who will end up get-ting scalped.

In fact, I have a theory that most share prices move in a very random manner in the very short term. Over the longer term, prices become less random and move more in line with fundamentals.

therefore, I urge all investors, to do their homework and analy-sis, but have a clear and rational time horizon and

look through the short term noise.

Pick your spots, have the courage of your convic-tions and remember mar-ket timing is not a science, it’s an art.

It is improbable that you will time it exactly right and so if you have Sh100,000 do half and always leave some fire-power available, because markets are not efficient. And ours can become like the masai mara at migra-tion time; loads of wilde-beest with a death wish and a few very fat lions.

Now I think we are about to embark on a one off period of catch up. And whereas it took every-one else a few decades if not more, we are going to find that our catch up is telescoped into fewer years. So let your horizon be cognisant of this.

Aly-Khan Satchu www.rich.co.ke is the author of Anyone Can Be Rich, available in local book-shops.

We should have rational time horizons

Equity bank (Sh117.00)the price is being affected by a perception that an ODm Government might be problematic. Come on! ODm can-not go around killing the golden geese.

iCDC (Sh26.75)Buy for 2008. It’s oversold.

barclays (Sh75.50)Buy for medium term. they have turned super aggres-sive but capex will impact near term.

access Kenya (Sh18.05)Buy for medium term. the It sector has explosive upside.

Jubilee (Sh198.00)Buy for long term.

Shares go up and down and readers are advised that this column represents mr Satchu’s personal opinions.

4 to bUY

tby peter kiragu

THE submarine fibre optic ca-ble will arrive at Mombasa in January 2009, the Communi-cations Commission of Kenya has said.

CCK Director General En-gineer John Waweru said the fibre cable would avail a high speed bandwidth, which the country needs to fully utilise internet technology.

Kenya wants to drive down telecommunications costs for it to tap into the lucrative out-sourcing industry and make the country an information technology hub.

Statistics indicate that the country’s call centre business has grown rapidly. The busi-ness has so far employed 3,000 people this year up from 200 last year. This is despite relying on expensive satellite-based communications.

Information permanent sec-retary Bitange Ndemo has in many occasions said that to get more companies to give their business to Kenyan call centres, the country needs to increase its bandwidth up to 500 megabits per second.

Currently there is a there is a limitation of broadband serv-ices in Kenya. UUNET, Safari-com and Telkom are the only

companies with broadbands that offer voice, data and video services at high speeds.

“Safaricom has a 3G licence broadband. UUNET are also on broadband. But there are still a few things the Govern-ment must do, one of which is to bring the submarine ca-ble to the port of Mombasa,” Waweru said adding that broadband would not work in Kenya without the subma-rine cable. He was speaking at a Nairobi hotel during a

function to formally intro-duce Geoffrey Shimanyula as the UUNET Kenya managing director. Shimanyula replaced Henry Njoroge who resigned early this year.

Waweru said once the fibre landed in Mombasa, Kenya would experience an indus-trial revolution, as high speed Internet services would be widely available both at homes and in offices. But Shimanyula predicted the submarine cable would present new challenges

in terms of competition to the industry. He added there was a likelihood of re-location of offices, leading to loss of jobs, with firms previously having servers in Kenya preferring other locations like London.

However, Shimanyula said since Kenya was strategically placed in terms of time zones, and with the country’s highly skilled human resource, the country was in a good position to service the business out-sourcing market.

UNDErSEa CablE to booSt traDE

by star Correspondent

TELKOM Kenya has peti-tioned the Government to ban export of copper wires.

The company’s chief corporate communications manager Bernard Rubia said it was ironical for the country to export copper while it did not mine the product. Rubia

said the company, through the Attorney General’s office, was working to gazzette the ban, a move he said would save tax payers millions of shillings.

Rubia told a press brief-ing that it was only through such a ban that the state could be able to address the problem of cable van-dalism in the country.

Rubia said copper was a vital commodity in the commu-nication industry and that its exportation was hamper-ing its growth which was in the process of picking up to international standards. He said Telkom Kenya was losing more than Sh500 mil-lion annually due to copper vandalism. Rubia added that

several measures including the introduction of the wire-less and pay phones and the broadband optic fiber among others were being put in place to address the problem. Rubia said plans were at an advanced stage to finalise the technical areas on video conferencing which would be a more effec-tive mode of communication.

telkom calls for ban on copper exports

UGANDA’S coffee may be blacklisted on the internation-al market following a spate of thefts of coffee on transit, a media report has said.

Between May and October, the country lost about Sh33.5 million in container thefts. In 2006, Uganda lost two boxes but this year alone, 16 boxes have been stolen.

“They manipulate the doors without breaking the seals,” David Barry, managing direc-tor of Uganda’s coffee lead-ing exporter Kyagalanyi, was quoted as saying. Barry said that while it was safer for the coffee to go by railway as op-

posed to road, most export-ers used the road. He noted that rising coffee prices this year could be one of the rea-sons for the thefts. Robusta coffee is now going for about 1.95 dollars (Sh128) per kg in London, from the 1.61 dol-lars (Sh106) a year ago. “We now have to open containers in Mombasa to ensure that what we packed is the right content,” Barry said.

Roy Lugone, the managing director of another coffee ex-porter KAWACOM, said since the year started, they had lost about six containers appar-ently when they were being

transported through Kenya. “It is a bad experience for us and business as a whole. Peo-ple opened some of the con-tainers and found sand,” he said. “Many buyers are con-cerned about Uganda’s coffee and we call upon the govern-ment to act first,” he said.An official from the Uganda Coffee Development Author-ity (UCDA) said the thefts were on the rise and they had held a meeting to address the problem. “Our mandate is to monitor the containers up to the border and then they are in the hands of the transport-ers,” he said.

thefts threaten Uganda coffee

CablE ProMiSE: the CCk headquarters in nairobi. CCk has said the fibre cable will arrive in mombasa in 2009. (inset) uunet md geoffery shimanyula.

UNDEr tHrEat: a ugandan coffee farmer.

PhotoS/FILE