The rand weakened all the way to R11.77 to the dollar on Wednesday morning from Tuesday’s R11.71/$ as the market braced itself for how bad the news on higher taxes will be.Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba is scheduled to commence his budget speech at 2pm.In October, in his medium term budget policy statement, Gigaba warned that the government’s expenditure was R51bn higher than it was collecting in taxes.Likely ways the government intends to raise taxes include increasing value added tax (VAT) by one percentage point to 15%. The rand weakened to R14.51 to the euro from Tuesday’s R14.46, and to R16.46 to the pound from Tuesday’s R16.41.Statistics SA is scheduled to release January’s consumer price index (CPI) at 10am.Inflation, as measured by the annual change in CPI, is expected to have remained at about December’s 4.7%.Besides budget jitters, the JSE is likely to suffer on Wednesday from US retail giant Walmart’s 10.2% crash to $94.11 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.The par...
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