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Johannesburg - The rand was steady against the dollar on Wednesday after consumer inflation data brought few surprises and retail sales figures beat expectations.
The rand, which has traded in a narrow range throughout the week, was at R10.7420/$ at 15:43 GMT, barely changed from Tuesday's New York close.
South Africa's headline consumer inflation quickened in February to 5.9% year-on-year, as expected, from 5.8% in January, Statistics South Africa said on Wednesday.
Core inflation, which excludes the volatile prices of food, non-alcoholic beverages, petrol and energy, was unchanged at 5.3% on a year-on-year basis.
Retail sales grew more than expected at 6.8% year-on-year in January, from a revised 2.7% in December. Economists had expected sales growth of 2.9%.
The closely-watched CPI data could influence the South African Reserve Bank's decision on interest rates when its monetary policy committee meets next week.
At the last meeting in January, the Sarb raised its repo rate by 50 basis points (bp) to 5.50%.
"Following the Sarb's decision to hike the repo rate by 50bp in January, the February CPI release was keenly anticipated by markets to gauge how the upside risks to inflation are manifesting," Barclays Africa analysts wrote in a note.
"The CPI data showed that FX pass-through to the level of consumer prices has remained largely limited - as shown by the stable core CPI figure."
The yield on the 2026 government bond declined 5.5 basis points to 8.545% while that on the 2015 paper was 4 basis points lower at 6.92%.
The rand, which has traded in a narrow range throughout the week, was at R10.7420/$ at 15:43 GMT, barely changed from Tuesday's New York close.
South Africa's headline consumer inflation quickened in February to 5.9% year-on-year, as expected, from 5.8% in January, Statistics South Africa said on Wednesday.
Core inflation, which excludes the volatile prices of food, non-alcoholic beverages, petrol and energy, was unchanged at 5.3% on a year-on-year basis.
Retail sales grew more than expected at 6.8% year-on-year in January, from a revised 2.7% in December. Economists had expected sales growth of 2.9%.
The closely-watched CPI data could influence the South African Reserve Bank's decision on interest rates when its monetary policy committee meets next week.
At the last meeting in January, the Sarb raised its repo rate by 50 basis points (bp) to 5.50%.
"Following the Sarb's decision to hike the repo rate by 50bp in January, the February CPI release was keenly anticipated by markets to gauge how the upside risks to inflation are manifesting," Barclays Africa analysts wrote in a note.
"The CPI data showed that FX pass-through to the level of consumer prices has remained largely limited - as shown by the stable core CPI figure."
The yield on the 2026 government bond declined 5.5 basis points to 8.545% while that on the 2015 paper was 4 basis points lower at 6.92%.
