JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South Africa’s rand strengthened on Wednesday as strong commodity prices offered support on a day when the dollar itself firmed against a basket of currencies as riskier markets and the euro lost ground due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
A slew of debilitating sanctions imposed on Russia by Western countries has not only led the ruble to a free fall, it has been hurting riskier currencies as well, including the South Africa rand, for the last few days.
However, with South Africa being a mining-led economy, the rand has found some strength on the back of strong commodity prices on the day.
At 1635 GMT, the rand was trading at 15.3455 against the dollar, up 0.55%.
The rand has weakened by 0.75% against the dollar since the start of Russia’s attack on Ukraine from last Thursday, but reversed some of the losses on Wednesday.
“As the situation in Ukraine remains the primary catalyst of market activity, price action remains skittish and cautious; this as market participants await the next headlines,” Nedbank analysts wrote in a note.
In fixed income, the yield on the benchmark 2030 government bond was up 5.5 basis points at 9.600%.
Shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) moved up, led once again by commodity stocks such as coal mining companies, platinum group metal miners and petrochemical producer Sasol Ltd .
The benchmark all-share index ended up 0.55% to 77,536 points and the blue-chip index of top 40 companies was up 0.67% to 71,058 points.
(Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo and Promit Mukherjee;Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Andrea Ricci)
