{"id":170125,"date":"2017-04-12T15:38:27","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T13:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=170125"},"modified":"2017-04-13T10:51:44","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T08:51:44","slug":"interest-rates-on-hold-until-at-least-2020-because-of-downgrade-analysts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/170125\/interest-rates-on-hold-until-at-least-2020-because-of-downgrade-analysts\/","title":{"rendered":"Rates cuts on hold until at least 2020 because of downgrade: analysts"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s debt downgrade to junk status and the finance minister’s recent dismissal mean interest rates will be on hold until 2020 at least, a Reuters <\/a><\/strong>poll of economists found on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The economists in the poll, taken a week after Fitch Ratings Agency and Standard & Poor’s downgraded South Africa to “junk”, said that the downgrades had all but officially ruled out rate cuts altogether and could instead, lead to\u00a0the possibility of hikes.<\/p>\n

Medians from the poll suggest rates will be on hold at 7% until at least 2020, the end of the forecast horizon a heavy contrast to\u00a0a similar poll taken by Reuters last month in which the majority of economists found that\u00a0a 25 basis point cut was expected early next year.<\/p>\n

On Monday, 10 April, the South African Reserve Bank said\u00a0the rand had re-emerged as a risk to inflation following an increase in domestic political uncertainty.\u00a0However it noted that it was still too early to announce the likelihood of changes to the rates.<\/p>\n

This cautious optimism by the SARB and the polled economists was echoed by KPMG’s\u00a0Christie Viljoen who said he did not think the SARB would tighten monetary policy.<\/p>\n

“Rather, a likely upward adjustment in their inflation expectations will result in a delay in the eventual downward movement in lending rates,” he said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0\u2018Some comrades do not understand ratings downgrade\u2019 \u2013 ANC\u2019s Godongwana<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s debt downgrade to junk status and the finance minister’s recent dismissal mean interest rates will be on hold until 2020 at least, a Reuters poll of economists found on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":115086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-170125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170125","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170125"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170359,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170125\/revisions\/170359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}