South African business confidence moderated in March as the US-Israeli war with Iran roiled financial, commodity and foreign-exchange markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A measure of sentiment compiled by the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry dropped to 131.3 from 134.6 in the previous month, it said in a statement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decline \u201cwas mainly the result of a more volatile and weaker rand exchange rate, lower share prices on the JSE, the lower global price of precious metals, and decreased volumes of merchandise imports,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese declines were mainly owing to exogenous developments pertaining to the war in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the conflict began on 28 February, the rand has shed some of its previous gains \u2014 at one point weakening beyond the R17\/$ mark \u2014 while the benchmark FTSE\/JSE All Share Index has fallen 10%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief among the concerns of the business sector were lower volumes of foreign merchandise trade, restrained retail trade sales and the higher cost of energy, the chamber said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the dip in the main index from the prior month, it increased 6.3% year-on-year basis, boosted by increased tourism and higher precious metal prices, the SACCI said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIncreased new vehicle sales, more overseas tourists, and lower inflation had a notable positive impact on business confidence in March 2026,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Ntando Thukwana for Bloomberg News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South African business confidence moderated in March as the US-Israeli war with Iran roiled financial, commodity and foreign-exchange markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":822197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[1889,25245,1744],"class_list":["post-857915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-business-confidence","tag-business-confidence-index","tag-sacci"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857915","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857916,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857915\/revisions\/857916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}