{"id":15911,"date":"2012-10-26T20:08:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T18:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/10\/s-africas-rand-firms-as-gold-strikes-draw-to-close\/"},"modified":"2012-10-26T20:08:02","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T18:08:02","slug":"s-africas-rand-firms-as-gold-strikes-draw-to-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/s-africas-rand-firms-as-gold-strikes-draw-to-close\/","title":{"rendered":"S.Africa&#8217;s rand firms as gold strikes draw to close"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Upbeat U.S. GDP figures add support for rand<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Bonds continue to ease after medium term budget<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Vuyani Ndaba<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>JOHANNESBURG, Oct 26 (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa&#8217;s rand firmed<br \/>\nagainst the dollar on Friday as a gold mining strike drew to a<br \/>\nclose and investors continued to cheer a pledge by Finance<br \/>\nMinister Pravin Gordhan to keep state spending in check for the<br \/>\nnext three years.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The rand was at 8.6702 against the dollar at 1604<br \/>\nGMT, 0.85 percent stronger than Thursday&#8217;s close of 8.7441 in<br \/>\nNew York.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Data showing that the U.S. economy expanded 2 percent in the<br \/>\nthird quarter also helped boost international investors&#8217;<br \/>\nappetite for riskier emerging market assets.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A few investors were playing South Africa from the short<br \/>\nside. They have been closing positions after fairly positive<br \/>\nU.S. GDP numbers that came out a few hours ago,&#8221; UBS strategist<br \/>\nManik Narain said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The strikes have fizzled out this week, but they have stood<br \/>\nout as the worst industrial unrest in the gold mines since the<br \/>\nend of apartheid in 1994 and have cost the economy over 10<br \/>\nbillion rand ($1.1 billion), according to the Treasury.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>They were also a factor in Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan<br \/>\ncutting his 2012 growth forecast to 2.5 percent of GDP from 2.7<br \/>\npercent projected in February, and pushing up his budget deficit<br \/>\nforecast to 4.8 percent of output in Thursday&#8217;s interim budget.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* Upbeat U.S. GDP figures add support for rand * Bonds continue to ease after medium term budget By Vuyani Ndaba JOHANNESBURG, Oct 26 (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa&#8217;s rand firmed against the dollar on Friday as a gold mining strike drew to a close and investors continued to cheer a pledge by Finance Minister Pravin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-15911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}