{"id":42827,"date":"2026-08-17T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T08:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=42827"},"modified":"2026-08-17T10:00:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T08:00:46","slug":"rand-starts-week-stronger-with-inflation-data-in-focus","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/rand-starts-week-stronger-with-inflation-data-in-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand starts week stronger with inflation data in focus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">The South African (SA) Rand firmed against the United States (US) Dollar in early \u200btrade on Monday as investors looked ahead \u200cto inflation data later this week for clues on the health of Africa&#8217;s largest economy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">The Rand traded at 16.1425 \u200bagainst the Dollar, up roughly 0.4% from \u2060its previous close.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Statistics SA is \u200bdue to release July inflation data on \u200bWednesday, with analysts polled by\u00a0<i>Reuters<\/i>\u00a0expecting a cooler reading of 4.5%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Headline inflation accelerated to a two-year high\u00a0\u200bof 5.0% in June from 4.5%\u00a0\u200bin May, driven mainly by transport costs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Economists at Nedbank \u200csaid \u2060they expected it to slow to 4.3%, citing lower transport costs resulting from a decline in fuel prices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">The US Dollar weakened \u200bagainst a \u200bbasket of \u2060major currencies on Monday, while gold prices edged higher, supported by \u200brecent softer than expected US economic data that \u200bhas \u2060dampened expectations of a US interest rate increase next month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">SA&#8217;s benchmark 2035 government \u2060bond \u200bwas little changed in \u200bearly deals, as the yield fell half a basis point to \u200b8.425%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14374,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-42827","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"SA Rand firmed against the United States (US) Dollar","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42827","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\/42827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42828,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42827\/revisions\/42828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=42827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}