Johannesburg – The rand held
relatively steady against major currencies in late trade‚ with the
fallout of Lonmin’s Marikana mine shooting incident still hanging
on the rand’s performance‚ analysts said.
At 16:00 local time the rand was bid at
R8.3144 to the dollar from Friday’s close of R8.3127 and Thursday’s
close of R8.2198. It was bid at R10.2394 to the euro from its
previous close of R10.2651 and at R13.0405 against sterling from
R13.0463 before.
The euro was bid at $1.2317 from
$1.2337.
“Investors are worried that the
Lonmin violence spills over to other mines‚ which could affect the
entire mining environment in SA. This would obviously be bad for
mining production and therefore exports‚ thus the negativity
towards the rand currently‚” said Mark Kalkwarf‚ a portfolio
manager at Iquad.