South Africa’s rand strengthened slightly against a weaker dollar on Tuesday (11 March) amid ongoing global and domestic economic uncertainty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investors were mainly focused on an upcoming U.S. inflation report for insights into the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rand was trading at 18.30 against the U.S. dollar, approximately 0.3% stronger than its closing value on Monday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Attention will also be on the local budget presentation scheduled for Wednesday, which was postponed last month due to disagreements within the coalition government regarding a proposed two-percentage-point increase in value-added tax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday (12 March), the rand was trading at R18.27 to the dollar, R23.61 to the pound and R19.91 to the euro. Oil is trading lower at $69.25 a barrel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are five other news stories making waves in South Africa today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Message to South Africa:<\/strong>\u00a0Absa’s interim CEO, Charles Russon, has warned that South Africa must urgently de-escalate tensions with the United States. He stated that worsening diplomatic ties under former President Donald Trump threaten the rand, foreign investment, and economic growth. [News24<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good news for Woolworths food:<\/strong>\u00a0Woolworths is sourcing from other suppliers\u00a0and expects to have fully stocked shelves soon after supply issues and disruptions left some stores short of fresh produce and meat. [Business Day<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Budget D-day:<\/strong> Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is set to table his revised budget for 2025 on Wednesday (12 March). Economists expect taxpayers to suffer even without a massive VAT hike. [BusinessTech<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gauteng health crisis:<\/strong>\u00a0hospitals in Gauteng have been hit with a freeze on hiring new staff and halting ordering new equipment since October 2024. In February 2025, Gauteng Department of Health Deputy Director-General (DDG) Basani Baloyi allegedly met hospital CEOs and human resource managers to tell them that the post freeze would continue. [Daily Maverick<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pam Golding hacked:<\/strong>\u00a0Pam Golding Properties has reported a data breach that resulted in unauthorised access to some of the personal information stored on the group\u2019s customer relationship management (CRM) system. [BusinessTech<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are 5 important things happening in South Africa today (12 March 2025).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":816384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20398],"tags":[18993,853],"class_list":["post-816379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5-things","tag-5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816379","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\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816379"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":816388,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816379\/revisions\/816388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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