NAIROBI, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- A rally in stock prices of 11 blue chips at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) lifted the 20 Share Index by 31 points on Tuesday, ending a negative trend.

The index gained 30.99 points to close at 3,735.00, boosted by Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), which gained 4 percent, Kenya Power (3 percent), Scangroup (9.4 percent) and KenolKobil (3 percent), among others.

The NSE All share Index (NASI) was similarly up 0.04 points to close at 180.68 points while the NSE 25 was up 15.19 points to close at 4525.47.

Foreign participation stood at 53 percent while local at 47 percent with the former mainly being net buyers of Safaricom.

The telecom was the most traded stock, moving 7.4 million shares at a flat average of 0.29 dollars per share.

Equity Bank came second at 4.5 million shares, followed by Kengen, Kenol and KCB trading 3.9 million, 1.7 million and 1.5 million shares respectively.

Market turnover stood at 8.6 million dollars on a volume of 25.1 million shares from the 65.7 million shares worth 13 million dollars traded on Monday.

Bond turnover went up to stand at 18 million dollars from 12 million dollars on Monday.