JOHANNESBURG - The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decision press conference will be held today where the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) will announce the repo rate.
Today’s repo rate announcement will be the first one for 2021.
Last week a Reuters poll forecasted that the SARB will keep the repo rate at 3.50 percent. For the poll, 17 out of 20 economists expected that SARB Governor Lesetja Kganyago will hold the rates steady.
The other three economists predicted that the repo rate will be lowered by 25 bps.
Last year the final MPC decision for 2020 left the repo rate unchanged. At the time, Kganyago said that the implied policy rate path of the Quarterly Projection Model indicated no further repo rate cuts in the near term.
Ahead of the announce NKC Research expects the rand to remain stable.The expected range of the rand against the dollar today is R14.70/$ - R15.00/$
The MPC announcement will be broadcast live on SABC3, eNCA, BDTV, CNBC Africa and Newzroom Afrika at 15:00.
The conference will be hosted virtually on the Zoom platform. It will also be streamed live on the South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB) Facebook and YouTube accounts.
BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE