JOHANNESBURG — The rand remained stuck in a narrow trading range at midday yesterday as investors waited for the Reserve Bank’s interest rate decision before making any major bets.
Economists expect the bank to keep interest rates unchanged at 5,75% at the monetary policy committee meeting, the last for the year.
A number of factors support the view of unchanged rates‚ including inflation having remained within the 3% to 6% target band in October, a stable rand-dollar exchange rate and subdued oil prices.
Only four of the 13 economists surveyed by BDpro, expected rates to rise 25 basis points.
With the chances of a rate hike slim, some analysts expected the rand to look offshore for direction.
“We get a bunch of manufacturing data out of Europe, a Turkey rate decision . . . and later in the afternoon we get US CPI (consumer producer index) data, which could send currency markets into a tailspin if there is any major deviation from expectations,” Standard Bank currency trader Warrick Butler said.
At 11:57pm the rand was at R11,0272 against the dollar from a previous close of R11,0491 on Wednesday. Against the euro the rand was at R13,8010 from a previous close of R13,8657 and at R17,2803 from an earlier close of R17,3172.
The euro was at $1,2517 from a previous close of $1,2547.
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– Reuters
