{"id":76022,"date":"2014-12-17T23:55:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T21:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=76022"},"modified":"2014-12-18T08:18:57","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T06:18:57","slug":"rand-vs-the-dollar-in-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/76022\/rand-vs-the-dollar-in-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand vs the dollar in 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African Rand in 2014, has experienced its worst year against the US dollar since the peak of the global economic crisis of 2008 and 2009.<\/p>\n

The local currency came under pressure early on in the year sinking to a 5-year low against the greenback, at R11.25 to the dollar, in late January.<\/p>\n

Analysts attributed the slide to word from the US Federal Reserve that it would trim back stimulus spending, which led to a massive sell-off in emerging economies.<\/p>\n

The impact was felt heavily in South Africa, deemed one of the \u201cFragile Five\u201d emerging economies struggling under a large current account deficit.<\/p>\n

The rand’s position improved gradually, dipping below R10.50 against the buck in May, but then lost ground again during a period of prolonged strikes, slow economic growth and an ever-increasing account deficit.<\/p>\n

In October, the minister of finance downgraded South Africa’s growth forecast for 2014 to 1.4% – the lowest level since the 2009 recession.<\/p>\n

Topping off a dismal year for the currency, nation-wide load-shedding in November and December pushed the currency to levels last recorded on 23 October 2008, according to XE.com.<\/p>\n

Economists Dawie Roodt and Mike Sch\u00fcssler predicted that the rand would close in 2014 at around the R11.50 level – and their predictions may end up to be nearly spot on as we count down to the end of the year.<\/p>\n

The rand traded at R11.60 against the dollar late on Wednesday, 17 December.<\/p>\n

Rand versus the dollar in 2014<\/h3>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1 January 2014<\/td>\nR10.50<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
17 December 2014<\/td>\nR11.60<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
% Change<\/td>\n11%<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Highest close – 11 December 2014<\/td>\nR11.72<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Lowest close – 23 May 2014<\/td>\nR10.30<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

* Prices taken from xe.com (accessed 12 December 2012) and represent the rand value at close of markets (PST).
\n<\/small><\/p>\n

\"ZAR<\/a>

ZAR vs USD in 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

More on the rand<\/h3>\n

Where to for punch-drunk rand in 2014?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Rand sinks to 5-year low<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why a weak rand sucks for SA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African rand has experienced a difficult year against the US dollar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4068,26,3670],"class_list":["post-76022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-dollar","tag-headline","tag-rand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76022","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=76022"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76282,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76022\/revisions\/76282"}],"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=76022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}