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May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
Johannesburg - South Africa's
government bonds fell further on Wednesday while the rand
steadied despite reports the government is considering a mining
wealth fund that could be used to cap the currency's gains, and
as markets awaited news of a new Greek bailout.
Bond yields rose for a third day, with the 2015 bond yield
rising five basis points to 6.58 percent and that on the 2026
issue up 6.5 basis points to 8.32 percent, as
profit-taking following strong gains last week was extended.
"The market went too far at the end of January and beginning
of February so this is just a bit of correction," said Ian
Scott, a bond dealer at Stanlib.
"We've had a good retracement and it will now be
rand-dependent and also what comes out of Greece."
The rand was stuck in a familiar narrow range as dealers
waited for news on a fresh 130 billion euro bailout needed to
prevent a chaotic debt default by Greece next month.
Market reaction was muted to a report that the ruling
African National Congress is considering using proceeds of a
proposed mining tax to build a sovereign wealth fund to
intervene in the currency market.
Bonds are likely to remain under pressure ahead of Finance
Minister Pravin Gordhan's budget on Feb. 22 and further losses
could be seen if the bill does not outline tough moves to curb
fiscal slippage that has widened the budget deficit.
The rand was trading on 7.5510 to the dollar at
1545 GMT, not far from Tuesday's New York close of 7.5545.
"There was a strong rally in risk sentiment across the board
and it's common that we see profit taking around these levels,"
said Duncan Howes, trader at Absa Capital, adding that news from
Greece should give impetus for a break out of current ranges.
The rand hit a session high of 7.52 with one dealer saying
if fails to break resistance at 7.50 soon, it will be vulnerable
to moves towards the 7.60's.
South African President Jacob Zuma will give his State of
the Nation address late on Thursday. He is expected to outline
more programmes to quicken the pace of job creation to tackle
the country's chronic unemployment.