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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 was firmer against the dollar in
early trade on Thursday and was seen gaining in the session amid hope that the US
and Europe will soon agree on how to deal with their debt problems.
The rand has been battered in recent sessions along with
other high-yielding riskier assets by global factors such as the Greek bail out
and a looming deadline for the United States to decide on raising its
debt-ceiling.
However, on Wednesday the rand failed to break key support
at the R6.95 level and dealers said that failure should trigger a bounce back
to R6.80.
The currency traded at R6.8425 to the dollar at 06:41 GMT,
up 0.26% from Wednesday's close at 6.86.
The central bank will announce a decision on the repo rate
after 13:00 GMT, when the Monetary Policy Committee concludes its three-day
rate-setting meeting.
A Reuters poll of 21 economists all agreed the rate would be
held steady at 5.5%, although some predicted an increase towards the end of the
year.
Some economists have however pushed out their expectations
of a hike after May retail sales on Wednesday showed no growth, adding to the
weak domestic demand picture painted by manufacturing data last week.
"The market was pricing in a definite 50 basis point
rate hike by February 2012. The weak figures out have now resulted in Forward
Rate Agreements in this area discounting a 50% chance of a hike," said
Rand Merchant Bank.
Government bonds were nearly unchanged, with the yield on
the four year note steady at 7.41% and that on the 2026 paper down just one
basis point to 8.505%.