Rand weakens beyond R10/$ level

The rand weakened beyond the R10/$ level earlier in the session before finding support from local exporter activity at midday on Wednesday (14 August).

By Fifi Peters

14 Aug 2013

"We saw local exporters selling dollars in exchange for rands at higher levels which prevented the currency weakening further‚ but activity was fairly limited and the bias for dollar buying is still in place‚" Nedbank head of spot forex trading William Van Rijn said.

At 11.28am‚ the rand was bid at R9.9932 to the dollar from its intraday weakest level of R10.0136/$ and Tuesday's (12 August) close of R9.9798.

Against the euro‚ the rand was bid at R13.2380 from its previous close of R13.2304 and was at R15.4595 against sterling from R15.4083 at its previous close.

The euro was bid at US$1.3243 from US$1.3260 at Tuesday's close.

Statistics SA is expected to release retail sales figures for June at 1pm on Wednesday (14 August).

Growth in retail trade sales is expected to have slowed in June to 2.8% year on year (y/y) from 6.2% in May‚ according to a survey of leading economists by I-Net Bridge. Forecasts among the nine economists ranged from 1.1% to 4.5%.