The SA Reserve Bank denied on Thursday its recent move to purchase US dollars was aimed at influencing the value of the rand.
”(This is) in no way directed at seeking to influence a particular level of the rand — whose value will continue to be set by the market,” SARB governor Tito Mboweni said.
He was briefing reporters in Pretoria after the first quarterly meeting of the bank’s monetary policy committee.
The committee resolved not to adjust the repo rate, at which it lends money to commercial banks. As a result, the prime interest rate will stay steady at 17%.
Mboweni underlined that the central bank — consistent with its inflation-targeting framework — had no intermediate policy guidelines.
”Recently, with the recovery of the rand, the reserve bank had taken the opportunity to purchase dollars for our reserves on a moderate scale,” he said.
This helped to reduce the bank’s net open position in foreign currency from $1,8-billion at the end of November last year to $1,3-billion a week ago.
”Such operations purely represent normal prudent management of the reserve bank’s balance sheet as is ordinarily the case in central banking,” Mboweni said. – Sapa