The rand was marginally weaker against all major currencies on Monday morning ahead of the US Federal Reserve announcement on interest rates later in the week. The Fed is widely expected to hike rates to 0.75% from 0.5%. If the Fed does hike rates, the increase will come a week after the European Central Bank (ECB) announced its plan to extend its asset bond-buying programme to the end of December 2017 as well as reducing monthly payments to EUR60bn from EUR80bn. Weakness in the rand can also be attributed to domestic data released last week that showed that the current account deficit had widened to 4.1% of GDP in the third quarter from 2.9% in the second quarter. The larger margin was unexpected and put pressure on the local currency. At 8.56am, the rand was at R13.8289/$ from Fridays’s R13.8003. It was at R14.6113 to the euro from R14.5547 and R17.4095 to the pound from R17.3795. The euro was at $1.0566 from $1.0532. Wichard Cilliers, the head of dealing and a director at Treasur...
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