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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
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May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
Johannesburg - The rand remained in ranges in noon trade on Friday with a local trader citing a weaker dollar for the local
currency's strength.
At 09:00 the rand was bid at R8.3204 to the dollar from an overnight close of R8.3190. It was bid at R11.6207 to the euro from a previous R11.5674 and at R13.1983 against sterling from R13.2003.
The euro was bid at $1.3949 from $1.3902 overnight.
A local trader said: "The rand is sitting in ranges at the moment, after the US dollar had another bad evening. And while the dollar remains weaker, the rand should stay strong. We need to break the R8.30 mark today, convincingly, and if we can do that, we could see R8.20.
"However, there is a holiday in the US on Monday, so I think we might sit in ranges till then," the trader said.
Said RMB analyst John Cairns in his morning report: "The rand is expected to maintain its momentum today and has the potential to break the key R8.25 support level should EUR/USD surge to $1.40. With little in the way of event risk, we see USD/ZAR trading within a range of R8.25 - R8.45 today," he concluded.
Dow Jones Newswires reports the dollar is off multi-month lows seen in Asia on Friday after markets spooked themselves into believing that the US could go the same way as the UK, which suffered on Thursday a ratings outlook downgrade from
Standard & Poor's.
The pound, which recovered overnight from the ratings scare, met with profit-taking ahead of the second release of first-quarter UK gross domestic product data, with the first reading's 1.9% quarterly decline left unrevised.
The dollar, which fell to a two-month low against the yen of ¥93.86 earlier on Friday after Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said the government has no plans to intervene to boost the US currency, has also recovered to trade above the ¥94.00.
US markets were hit on Thursday on speculation, triggered by rating agency S&P putting the UK's AAA rating on negative watch, that the US could lose its AAA rating.
The dollar, the Dow and Treasuries all fell as the US appeared to lose its safe-haven status almost overnight.
By 09:52 GMT, the dollar had slipped back a little with the euro fetching $1.3951 from $1.3890 in late US trade on Thursday, but off Asia's $1.3979 high. The pound is at $1.5847, little changed from late on Thursday but off Asia's $1.5890 high.
- I-Net Bridge