JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's rand edged lower against the dollar on Monday amid thin trade due to holidays in Britain and Japan and a slightly weaker euro.
The rand was at 9.0210 to the dollar at 1444 GMT, down 1.2 percent from Friday's New York close. "It's a mixture of a thin holiday market and the euro has come off a little bit," said Rand Merchant Bank trader Jim Bryson.
The euro slipped on Monday after business surveys showed that the euro zone's economic downturn dragged on in April, suggesting the region may be falling deeper into recession this quarter.
In South Africa, data released by Statistics South Africa showed that the unemployment rate rose to 25.2 percent of the labour force in the first quarter of 2013 compared with 24.9 percent in the final quarter of last year.
This was equivalent to 4.6 million people without work in Q1, up from 4.5 million in the previous three months, Stats SA said.
Government bonds were weaker, with the yield on the 2026 paper inching up 4 basis points to 5.095 percent and that on the 2015 paper gaining 6 basis points to 6.71 percent.
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