Rand Strengthens as Gold Reaches Record

The South African rand reached the highest level in more than three months against the US dollar today as central said that restraining the capital inflows to weaken the currency “would not be appropriate” and as gold touched another all-time high.

Daniel Mminele, a South African Reserve Bank Deputy Governor, said that South Africa “carefully studied” the actions that other emerging-market countries have taken to limit foreign inflows and decided that it’s “rather doubtful” that such measures can weaken the nation’s currency and they “would not be appropriate for South Africa at this stage”. Gold rallied to new record today and platinum gained, supporting the rand as these two metals account for a fifth of South Africa’s exports.

USD/ZAR dropped from 6.6520 to 6.6360 as of 14:01 GMT today and reached earlier 6.6210, the lowest level since January 4.

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