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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 - The rand eased slightly against the dollar in
early Friday trade as investors' appetite for riskier emerging market assets
waned after disappointing economic data out of Asia.
Government bonds also showed weakened ahead of the sale of
domestic government paper later in the session.
The rand was trading at R7.6550 by 06:37 GMT, a shade weaker
than a R7.64 close in New York. The currency hit a five-month high of R7.605
during on Thursday.
China reported disappointing services data early on Friday,
putting a slight dent in risk appetite.
However, the rand and other emerging market assets may
bounce back if US jobs data paint a positive picture for the world's biggest
economy and Greek government talks with private creditors make headway.
“Even though the rand has recovered aggressively over a
relatively short space of time, if global risk appetite accelerates further,
then rand bulls could realistically look for a move down to R7.50, if not
R7.32, in the near term,” Absa Capital said.
Yields on government debt were up 2 basis points to 6.415%
on the 2015 bond and 8.085% on the 2026 issue.
Government is looking to sell R800m of inflation-linked
bonds, which saw decent demand last week. Results are due at 09:00 GMT.
The 3-month Treasury Bills, whose auction results will be
out at 10:00 GMT, were undersubscribed last week and will be a signal of
whether demand has returned or if the Treasury is going to be offering smaller
amounts of short-term debt.