JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -The South African rand was flat in choppy Thursday trading as investors reacted to key U.S. economic indicators and the removal of a South African deputy trade minister.
At 1432 GMT, the rand traded at 17.7325 against the dollar, roughly in line with Wednesday’s close.
The rand had gained almost 1% over the greenback after a media report said U.S.
President Donald Trump considered selecting and announcing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s replacement by September or October to undermine his position.
But it later weakened against a rebounding dollar and after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa removed from his position as deputy trade minister a politician from the Democratic Alliance (DA), said Shaun Murison, senior market analyst at IG.
Murison added that higher-than-expected U.S.
core inflation data released on Thursday also added to the rand’s volatility.
Domestic data showed that producer inflation slowed to 0.1% in May, according to Statistics South Africa.
Economists polled by Reuters expected the producer inflation to come in at 0.7% year-on-year from 0.5% recorded in April.
Separately, a quarterly bulletin by the South African Reserve Bank showed that foreign direct investment outflows grew by 61% quarter-on-quarter in the three months to March 31, even as inflows grew by 56%.
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s Top-40 index last traded up 0.8%.
South Africa’s benchmark 2035 government bond was weaker, as the yield rose 3 basis points to 9.955%.
(Reporting by Sfundo Parakozov and Alessandro Parodi, Editing by Louise Heavens and Tasim Zahid)
