The South African rand held its ground in early trading on Monday, shrugging off S&P Global’s first credit upgrade of the country since 2005\u2014a move to BB from BB- with a positive outlook\u2014as investors shift focus to this week’s looming interest rate decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In morning trade, the rand traded at R17.07 against the US dollar, little changed from its Friday close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The muted reaction reflects that the move was largely priced in, though the upgrade, combined with Treasury’s backing of a 3% inflation target, supports South Africa’s longer-term risk profile,” said Wichard Cilliers, head of market risk at TreasuryONE, in a note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, the rand briefly broke below a key R17-per-dollar level for the first time since February 2023 to touch R16.96 after the government’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement showed signs of fiscal discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week’s economic calendar will feature October consumer inflation figures and September retail sales data on Wednesday, followed by the central bank’s interest rate decision on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The general consensus is that the central bank will cut interest rates by a quarter point. However, economists polled by Reuters expect that the Monetary Policy Committee will keep its main lending rate unchanged at 7.0%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the Top-40 index was last up 0.5% in early trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa’s benchmark 2035 government bond was firmer in early deals, with the yield falling 5 basis points to 8.605%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Markets have largely shrugged off South Africa’s rating upgrade and has turned its focus to the next interest rate move later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":644027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[10315,3670,11765],"class_list":["post-843418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-interest-rate","tag-rand","tag-sp-global"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843418","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843419,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843418\/revisions\/843419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}