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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 slid against the dollar in
noon trade on Monday as it tracked a euro that had weakened on Greek
default fears.
"Greece's coalition members must let the EU know later today
whether or not they have accepted the conditions of a new bailout," a
local forex trader said.
"If Greece were to default, it would be a huge shock and it
won't bode well especially for emerging markets," he added.
However, the trader said that while Greece was at the
forefront of investors' concerns on Monday, he had in any event expected
a corrective phase to temper the appreciation of the rand.
At 11:32 local time, the rand was trading at R7.6214 to the
dollar from its previous close of R7.5160, a drop of 1.44%. It was
trading at R9.9296 to the euro from R9.9032 before, and at R11.9819
against sterling from R11.8929 previously.
The euro was trading at $1.3036 from its previous close of $1.3125.
Barclays Capital said in a note that all eyes would be on
Greece, which had until 12:00 GMT to indicate to EU officials how it
planned to further reduce its budget deficit.
"Although Greek officials indicate that they reached a
tentative agreement over the weekend, failure to satisfy EU officials
this morning could jeopardise the much needed US$14.5bn financial aid
that Greece is looking to obtain from the EU by mid-March for some of
its existing bond repayment commitments," Barclays Capital said.
Meanwhile, Dow Jones Newswires reported that Greece faced
around EUR14.5 billion of bond redemptions in March but it had exhausted
its first bailout from the European Union and the International
Monetary Fund.
"We continue to see the likelihood of a Greek messy default as
remote owing to the fact that the repercussions are as large as they
are hard to determine," interest rate strategists at Rabobank
International said in a note.
"That said, continued brinkmanship and a dose of pre-electoral
posturing in Greece itself stands to prompt further market jitters on
this front over the immediate term," they said.