JOHANNESBURG, March 5 (Reuters) – South African stocks
edged lower on Monday for a third consecutive session, led by
resource stocks such as Gold Fields and Harmony Gold
on the back of disappointing growth data from top
commodity consumer China.
The Asian giant cut its 2012 growth target to an eight-year
low of 7.5 percent as Beijing looks to wean the economy off its
reliance on external demand and foreign capital.
“It’s a China story today, all of our resource stocks
pulling back on the back of the data coming out of China,” said
Mitchell Gannaway, a trader at Thebe Securities.
“The 7.5 percent is not what the world has been used to in
the last couple of years as despite all the negatives in the
global economy, China was one of the more positive aspects.”
China is South Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner
and one of the biggest consumers of its commodities. Africa’s
largest economy is the world’s top producer of platinum and a
major supplier of gold, iron ore and coal.
The benchmark blue-chip Top-40 index fell 0.56
percent to 30,236.78 while the broader All-Share index
fell 0.45 percent to 34,031.77.
Gold Fields, South Africa’s second-biggest producer of
bullion, shed 2.8 percent to 112.30 rand and smaller rival
Harmony was down 1.7 percent at 91.95 rand.
Diversifed miner BHP Billiton shed 1.6 percent to
239.51 rand, while Kumba Iron Ore a unit of Anglo
American and the world’s 10th largest producer of iron
ore, used in the production of steel, was down 1.5 percent at
571.50 rand.
Johannesburg-traded shares of cigarette company British
American Tobacco Plc shed 2.2 percent to 375.88 rand.
Continued…
