{"id":22689,"date":"2026-01-21T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T06:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/rand-firmer-ahead-of-local-inflation-data\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:33:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:33:37","slug":"rand-firmer-ahead-of-local-inflation-data","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/rand-firmer-ahead-of-local-inflation-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand firmer ahead of local inflation data"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The South African (SA) Rand edged up in early trade on Wednesday, as traders awaited inflation and retail sales data that will shed light on the country’s economic outlook.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rand traded at 16.39 against the Dollar, about 0.2% firmer than its previous close.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Domestically-focused traders are waiting for December consumer inflation and November retail sales.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Economists polled by <\/span>Reuters\u00a0<\/i>expect annual inflation will come in at 3.6% for December, up from 3.5%.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is inline with Nedbank economists who anticipate inflation will rise slightly from 3.5% in November to 3.6%, mainly due to higher fuel prices.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The bank’s economists said petrol prices increased by 1.4% during the month, leading to a smaller year-on-year decline in fuel costs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“On the positive side, food inflation is likely to ease marginally from 4.4% to 4.3% as softer cereal and other food prices offset the impact of persistent meat price increases linked to foot-and-mouth disease,” said Nedbank in a research note.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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–Reuters–<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13745,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-22689","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"Rand edged up in early trade on Wednesday","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25902,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22689\/revisions\/25902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=22689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}