T-Bill, MMF and Bond Rates This Week: Kenya Rates Tracker With History

How to Read This Week’s T-Bill Rates

The three big figures at the top are the weighted average interest rates of accepted bids at the latest Central Bank of Kenya Treasury bill auction, copied from CBK’s own results document. That is the rate you get if you place a non-competitive bid, which is how most individual investors buy. CBK holds the auction every week: bids close at 2.00 p.m. on Thursday through DhowCSD or Treasury Mobile Direct, results come out the same day, and the bills are issued on the following Monday, which is the “value date” shown on the sheet.

The change line under each rate compares it with the previous week in basis points (one basis point is 0.01 percentage points). The “bids” figure is CBK’s performance rate: above 100% means investors offered more money than the government wanted to borrow on that tenor, which usually pushes rates down over the following weeks.

What You Actually Earn After Tax

Interest on Treasury bills is taxed at 15% withholding tax, deducted at source, so the sheet also shows the 364-day rate after tax. Treasury bills are sold at a discount: you pay less than the face value today and get the full face value at maturity. To turn a rate into shillings for your own amount, use the 91-day, 182-day or 364-day T-bill calculator.

T-Bills Against Money Market Funds

The column on the right lists the yields that money market fund managers publish on their own websites, with the date each figure refers to. Fund yields are not all the same kind of number: some managers publish a daily effective annual rate, others a three-month average, so compare them with care. MMF returns are also taxed at 15% withholding tax on interest, but a fund lets you withdraw in a few days while a T-bill locks your money until maturity. Our side-by-side guide to money market funds vs Treasury bills covers access, minimums and tax in detail, and MMF rates today carries the daily table. For all 59 CMA-approved funds, see money market funds in Kenya compared.

Treasury Bond Auctions

Bonds are auctioned less often than bills, usually once or twice a month, and pay a fixed coupon twice a year. The “Latest Bond Auctions” box shows the average rate of accepted bids and the coupon for each issue, linked to CBK’s result document. When the accepted rate is above the coupon, the bond sells below face value, so your real yield is higher than the coupon. Work out the coupon income with the Treasury bond calculator. Infrastructure bonds, marked IFB, are exempt from withholding tax; use the infrastructure bond calculator for those. Our guide to T-bills vs bonds vs infrastructure bonds explains which suits which goal.

How to Buy

You need a CSD account on CBK’s DhowCSD platform. The minimum for a non-competitive bid is KSh 50,000 per tenor, and payments go by electronic transfer before the value date. Our step-by-step guide on how to buy Treasury bills in Kenya covers opening the account and placing a bid.

Where the Numbers Come From

Every T-bill and bond figure on this sheet is read from the results PDF that CBK posts on its Treasury bills and Treasury bonds pages, and each row links to that document. The history table grows by one row each week and old rows are never edited. If CBK has not yet posted a result, the sheet keeps showing the last published auction and its date, so you always know how fresh the number is. Money market fund yields come from each fund manager’s website and carry the manager’s own as-at date.