{"id":13516,"date":"2012-05-24T16:33:13","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T14:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=13516"},"modified":"2012-05-25T11:13:24","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T09:13:24","slug":"interest-rates-remain-unchanged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/13516\/interest-rates-remain-unchanged\/","title":{"rendered":"Interest rates remain unchanged"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"SARB - South African Reserve Bank\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/3053-SARB-South-African-Reserve-Bank\">The Reserve Bank<\/a> will maintain current interest rates, governor <a title=\"Gill Marcus\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/3054-Gill-Marcus\">Gill Marcus<\/a> said on Thursday (24 May 2012).<\/p>\n<p>The repo rate would again remain unchanged at 5.5 percent, the bank&#8217;s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided. The prime rate would stay at nine percent.<\/p>\n<p>The bank would continue to closely monitor the situation and stood ready to act in either direction, said Marcus.<\/p>\n<p>Since the last meeting of the MPC, global oil prices had moderated as Saudi Arabia increased production.<\/p>\n<p>Oil was trading at over US125 (about R1045) a barrel in February, but had since dropped to below US110 (about R920).<\/p>\n<p>Petrol prices in South Africa increased by a cumulative 99 cents a litre in April and May.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A sizeable reduction [in the local price] is expected in June,&#8221; Marcus said. This, despite a weaker rand-dollar exchange rate.<\/p>\n<p>Inflation was forecast to average six percent in the second quarter of 2012.<\/p>\n<p>An average inflation rate of five percent was forecast for 2014, dropping further in the fourth quarter of that year.<\/p>\n<p>However, the situation in Europe remained volatile and unpredictable. Should Europe weaken further, South African exports would be affected.<\/p>\n<p>Investment could also be affected as global risk aversion increased, the MPC said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are very concerned about what is happening, and we are ready to move in either direction,&#8221; Marcus told reporters in Pretoria.<\/p>\n<p>Marcus was particularly worried about the situation in Europe, one of South Africa&#8217;s main trading partners, where many countries were battling recession.<\/p>\n<p>She dismissed suggestions that the Greek economy was the main worry.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is much bigger than the Greek effect. This is much bigger than talking about one country,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>This was the ninth consecutive meeting where the repo rate remained unchanged, after it was reduced by 650 basis points between mid-2008 and November 2010.<\/p>\n<p>It keeps the rate at its lowest level in over 30 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Reserve Bank will maintain current interest rates, governor Gill Marcus said on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,2922,2923,2921,2924],"class_list":["post-13516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-active","tag-interest-rates","tag-petrol-prices","tag-repo-rates","tag-reserve-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13516","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13516"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13579,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13516\/revisions\/13579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}