Johannesburg – The rand maintained a
softer bias at noon‚ with market players choosing to focus on the
potential spillover effects of the Lonmin
[JSE:LON] violence into
other mining companies.
Mark Kalkwarf‚ senior portfolio
manager at Iquad Group‚ said the local currency decoupled from the
euro/US dollar strength after German’s chancellor Angela Merkel
became the latest eurozone high profile to approve of some stimulus
measures for the euro.
At 12:16 local time the rand was bid at
R8.2909 to the dollar from Thursday’s close of R8.2198. It was bid
at R10.2409 to the euro from its previous close of R10.1558 and at
R13.0059 against sterling from R12.9241 before.
The euro was bid at $1.2363 from
$1.2355.
The violence at Lonmin’s Marikana
mine in the North West could scare away foreign investment‚
according to some analysts‚ believing the violence could spread to
other mining sectors and hurt employment‚ when nearly a quarter of
the country’s work force is unemployed.