Central banks prefer stability to almost any other quality and many have made either price or financial market stability their official policy. The elimination of South Africa’s forward book removes a historic source of vulnerability for the rand and will now allow the SARB to build its gross foreign reserves.
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/ 26 February 2004
A recent working paper by Eric Parrado of the International Monetary Fund’s monetary and financial systems department argues that flexible inflation targeting, which takes into account inflation as well as output, is superior to strict inflation targeting, where meeting the inflation target is the unique objective.
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/ 16 February 2004
The 2004/5 Budget to be presented on February 18 could provide a positive surprise to the South African capital market, Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt said on Monday. "I believe the minister of finance will reduce the call on the domestic capital market, so as to keep long-term yields in single digits," he said.
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/ 6 February 2004
The privatisation of South African state-owned enterprises (SOE) seems to have stalled, which, given independent research consultancy BusinessMap Foundation’s 2002 annual review title of <i>A Sense of Movement</i>, is very ironic. BusinessMap’s 2003 review is titled <i>A Change of Pace</i>.
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/ 2 February 2004
Central banks are very powerful determinants of interest rates and exchange rates. It has therefore been very disconcerting to financial market participants that the norm since December 2003 has been for central banks to spring surprises. The first major central bank to surprise the markets was the South African Reserve Bank.
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/ 2 February 2004
The South African province of the North West was the worst offender in spending or alternatively keeping track of its capital spending of South Africa’s nine provinces. In the first nine months of the fiscal year, the North West housing department spent only 2,6% of its capital expenditure allocation of R390-million.
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/ 28 January 2004
The South African economy will focus and have its course determined by "the three Rs", Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank managing director Ben Kruger said on Tuesday. "The three Rs in this case are not the ones you learnt at primary school, but are races, rates and the rand," he said.
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/ 19 January 2004
The rand’s near-18% move between a best level of R6,2348 a dollar on January 6 and R7,5750 on January 16 makes it unlikely that the rand’s volatility this year will be less than 30%, but the very stable year of 1999 started equally poorly, as the rand traded between R5,665 and R6,31 in January 1999.
The total volume of goods transported in South Africa during October 2003 rose by 3,6% y/y and 6,3% m/m to a record 65,181-million tons, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday.
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/ 10 December 2003
The strength of the rand warrants a further rate cut, Metropolitan Asset Manager’s economist Rejane Woodroffe said in her latest economic overview. "The sustained strength of the rand has continued to surprise … and paves the way for a further interest rate cut at this year’s final monetary policy committee meeting," she said.