THE rand, should recover strongly by the end of 2002, which is the horizon for the government’s newly-introduced inflation targets, Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni said on Tuesday. “The inflation target is set for the period between now and the end of the calender year 2002,” he said during radio phone-in show.”So in between that period the rand I am sure will come back very strongly, oil prices maybe will go down, the impact of the floods will have disappeared and things are likely to be good it’s possible that [inflation] as well will come down.” The rand slid to R6,60 against the dollar, its weakest level in 18 months, last Thursday. It stood at R6,55 at 10.00am on Tuesday.