{"id":29995,"date":"2026-03-26T11:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T09:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&p=29995"},"modified":"2026-03-26T11:30:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T09:30:56","slug":"rand-weakens-ahead-of-central-bank-rate-decision","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/rand-weakens-ahead-of-central-bank-rate-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand weakens ahead of Central bank rate decision"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Rand weakened in early trade on Thursday, ahead of a much-anticipated interest rate decision by the South African \u200bReserve Bank (SARB) later in the day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The \u200cRand traded at 17.03 against the Dollar, down 0.4% from Wednesday’s close.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Twenty one of 28 economists polled by\u00a0Reuters\u00a0<\/i>expect the SARB to keep its main \u200blending rate steady at 6.75% with a hawkish outlook at \u200bits meeting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Central bank’s Governor told Reuters<\/i> \u2060earlier this month that the bank will revise its risk scenarios\u00a0\u200bas the Middle East conflict continues to push oil prices higher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The \u200bSARB needs to decide whether to act pre-emptively on inflation and hike interest rates now, or whether to hold off, in the hope that the \u200bfluid situation in Iran calms down,” said ETM Analytics in a \u200bnote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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SA’s annual inflation slowed to the Central bank’s target of 3% in February, \u200cbut \u2060analysts said the slowdown could be temporary as the ripple effects of the Iran war will show up in upcoming releases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Commerzbank analyst Volkmar Baur said: “We must wait and see. Should the conflict \u200bcome to an \u200bend soon and \u2060oil prices return to normal, at least in part, the possibility of an interest rate cut \u200bis likely to arise again later this year.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Statistics SA\u00a0\u2060will publish producer inflation numbers, which could offer clues on the health of Africa’s most industrialised economy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the Johannesburg \u2060Stock \u200bExchange, the Top-40 index was down 1.8% \u200bin early trade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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SA’s benchmark 2035 government bond also weakened, as the yield rose \u200b10.5 basis points to 9.065%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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–Reuters–<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12528,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-29995","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Rand weakened in early trade on Thursday","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29995","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\/29995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29996,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29995\/revisions\/29996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=29995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}