| USD = R18.29 | AUD = R12.35 |
| GBP = R22.04 | DXY = 104.87 |
| EUR = R19.39 | Brent Crude = $83.86 per barrel |
New day a new Month what lies ahead for a battered Rand?
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday broke his silence on the remarks made by former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, who accused senior politicians of being part of cartels plundering the ailing power utility.
Ramaphosa told journalists that his administration was “most concerned” by De Ruyter’s allegations and he urged him to approach law enforcement institutions and properly ventilate his concerns.
- We opened February at R17.41 to the Dollar but after an encouraging start to the month taking us to R17.00 things just went from bad to worse from there. We topped out at R18.50 yesterday morning, but local and international headlines have seen us move to R18.29 this morning.
On the local front our Q4 2022 unemployment rate was widely expected to deteriorate thanks to the current run of non-stop load shedding which started on the 31st of October. Unemployment had been slowly falling since peaking at 35.3% in Q4 2021 but forecast called from an uptick from 32.9% in Q3 to around 33.3% in Q4, so it was a pleasant surprise when the actual number came in at 32.7%.
US consumer confidence unexpectedly declined in February, as rising prices and deepening concerns about the outlook outweighed the near-term strength of the labor market. The Conference Board’s index decreased to 102.9 from a 106 reading in January, data out Tuesday showed.
China’s manufacturing activity recorded its highest monthly improvement in more than a decade in February as factories reopened after the Lunar New Year holiday, giving more support to an economic recovery that has so far relied heavily on retail and services. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index rose to 52.6 last month from 50.1 in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
The UK and EU have, at last, agreed a deal that makes life easier for firms trading between Great Britain and Northern Ireland (NI).
Recall a key objective of the original Brexit deal, signed in 2019 by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was to keep an open border within the island of Ireland. The solution effectively kept NI in the EU’s single market for goods, thus necessitating customs and agri-food paperwork on shipments moving across the Irish Sea from the British mainland.
The new “Windsor Framework” agreed this week is designed to ease many of the major frictions that have arisen as a result of that original deal. The new framework introduces trusted trader schemes and green/red lanes at ports, while dealing with specific contentious issues like chilled meat exports – effectively making permanent various grace periods that had been successively extended since 2021.
SPORT
SPRINGBOKS FIXTURES IN 2023
Rugby Championship:
✈ 8 July: South Africa vs Australia (Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria)
✈ 15 July: South Africa vs New Zealand (Venue and time TBC)
✈ 29 July: Springboks vs Argentina (Ellis Park, Johannesburg)
WORLD CUP WARM-UPS:
✈ 5 August: South Africa vs Argentina (Vélez Stadium, Buenos Aires)
✈ 19 August: Springboks vs Wales (Millennium Stadium, Cardiff)
✈ 25 August: South Africa vs New Zealand (Twickenham Stadium, London)
RUGBY WORLD CUP:
✈ 10 September: South Africa vs Scotland (Stade Vélodrome, Marseille)
✈ 17 September: Springboks vs Romania (Stade de Bordeaux, Bordeaux)
✈ 23 September: South Africa vs Ireland (Stade de France, Saint-Denis, Paris)
✈ 1 October: Springboks vs Tonga (Stade Vélodrome, Marseille)
Quarter-finals sequence of play is as follows:
QF 1 — Winner Pool C vs Runner up Pool D
QF 2 — Winner Pool B vs Runner up Pool A
QF 3 — Winner Pool D vs Runner up Pool C
QF 4 — Winner Pool A vs Runner up Pool B
Semi-finals sequence of play is as follows:
SF 1 — Winner QF1 v Winner QF2
SF 2 — Winner QF3 v Winner QF4
Third place playoff:
Loser SF 1 vs Loser SF 2
World Cup final:
Winner SF 1 vs Winner SF 2