The rand eyed a move back below R15 against the US Dollar in afternoon trade on Thursday, after the European Central bank cut interest rates.<\/p>\n
The central bank also announced measures intended to boost the eurozone economy.<\/p>\n
The ECB said it will expand its quantitative easing programme from \u20ac60 billion to \u20ac80 billion a month.<\/p>\n
“This means there is more cheap money going around and the risky assets are loving it,” chief currency at Bidvest Bank Ion de Vleeschauwer told Reuters.<\/p>\n
By 15h15, the local unit had firmed more than a percent against the dollar to 15.0300, its strongest level since December, and far off its worst ever level of R17.99 as recently as 11 January<\/span>.<\/p>\n By 15h45, the rand had given back a fraction\u00a0 – at R15.07 to the US currency. It traded at R21.28 to the pound, and was 2.5% better against the euro at R16.32.<\/p>\n Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is currently on an international roadshow trying to calm investors over the country’s investment grade rating.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Moody\u2019s announced a move to place South Africa on review for a possible downgrade.<\/p>\n The ratings agency will visit the country in the next week to make a decision on whether to downgrade its credit status to just one notch above sub-investment grade.<\/p>\n It would join Standard & Poor\u2019s (S&P), and Fitch Group in their current assessment of the country, which is one notch above junk.<\/p>\n Gordhan was in London on Wednesday, and will next visit Boston and New York.<\/p>\n Countries where the South African rand is stronger<\/strong><\/p>\n The real value of the rand<\/strong><\/p>\n Rand eyes R15 to the dollar<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The rand eyed a move back below R15 against the US Dollar in afternoon trade on Thursday, after the European Central bank cut interest rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":114836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-116238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116238"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116264,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116238\/revisions\/116264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More on the rand<\/h3>\n