I’ll just get straight to it and state, having a USD account when you transact locally using KES is foolhardy. USD will save you when travelling across boundaries, anything less doesn’t add up as a reason to have such an account.
This is the game by local banks. The CBK pegs the USD at say KES 128 for example, banks will go ahead and state their prices as follows:
Buying 1 USD at KES 126.50
Selling 1 USD at KES 139.00
Having a USD account will only make sense if you have funds that you earned when the price was KES 113-120 thereof and those funds run into the thousands i.e upwards of 6,000 USD. Keeping dollars in a bank that sells your cash at a KES 11-12 markup is stupid to you as the customer. You are simply enriching the banks. Yours are just numbers on a computer, and to them they sell it and earn hard cash.
Local banks are getting clever, when the dollar strengthens against the KES, they simply pump up the selling price and add a measly 50 cents to the buying price. Even Forex Bureaus are starting to play that game too.
I think you are right. Because if you want to use the money, you have to buy KES from the bank and it will screw you. Diasporas should just keep their dollars in their foreign accounts and remit to Kenya bank accounts only in KES because they can get good deals from foreign banks or western money union or moneygram
The main issue with having a dollar account with local banks is that when sh*t hits the fan, the government can order banks to convert all dollar deposits into valueless Ksh and take the USD for themselves. It has happened before in other countries. So inafikiria uko na $100,000 stashed unapata inageuzwa to Ksh 13 million forcefully. Alternatively they limit withdrawals. This has happened locally unapata you can withdraw say $500 max per day na pesa ni yako. Basically, it only gives you a false sense of security because when you really need it, it’s unavailable.
Most people are hoarding. Basically buying at 125 and hoping they can sell at 150 to bag the 25/- difference. But that’s short sighted and daft.
However, if you have dollar expenditure, (commercial rent, import bills) then you can hedge buy buying dollars now to avoid paying a higher exchange rate in future. Hedging.
The main problem with dollar issues in Kenya is interbank forex trading has been curtailed by the government massively.
Hii ndio inaleta mambo yote, if they remove all the restrictions kwa hii dollar will go to 105 within a month.
There is enough dollars in the market, but banks are hoarding it massively as they can’t trade between themselves thus waiting for civilians with dollars to transact.
How Nabii’s economic advisors can’t explain this to him, is very absurd
I used to withdraw kwa bank and go change kwa bureau ya Waria. The bank would even beg and offer a better rate than the displayed dollar buying rate but it was still lower than what I was getting huko nje.
Someone once told me dollars hukua na series then after some time inakua phased out so you can only hoard at home for sometime …sijui kama ilikua story ya jaba
If you are dealing with small amount that is ok. But suppose you are doing a project, for example construction? You need millions of KES, for security reasons you cannot be going to waria bureau. You dont want to be carrying such cash around, incase the bureau can exchange that in the first place
I doubt. I have had a dollar account and the most important factor is receiving wire transfer. The balance you get is what was wired without lame rates. No way it can happen in Kenya what you are suggesting.