Cape Town - South Africa’s rand is set to extend declines as the risk of forced blackouts by Eskom, the state-owned electricity company, rises, according to Nomura Holdings.
The currency may drop to 9.95 per dollar, with past experience as a guide, Peter Attard Montalto, a London-based emerging-markets economist at Nomura, wrote in a research note e-mailed to clients today.
A “more conservative” target for the currency is 9.52 per dollar, he said.
It traded 0.2 percent weaker at 9.2031 per dollar by 12:29 p.m. in Johannesburg.
The rand fell 15 percent against the dollar in the first quarter of 2008, when coal shortages and maintenance at power plants forced Eskom to cut electricity to the nation’s mines, a program known as load shedding.
The risk of a repeat this quarter and next year is “very high” after strikes at mines owned by Exxaro Resources, the nation’s second-biggest coal producer, cut supplies to plants, Montalto said.
“The electricity supply situation is extremely tight,” he said.
“The risk of load-shedding is the highest since start 2008. The system can easily be tripped over into load- shedding.”
A fault at Koeberg, South Africa’s only nuclear power plant, damaged transmission lines from the Cahora Bassa hydropower site in Mozambique, and maintenance at other plants have cut generating capacity by 22 percent, Eskom said on March 11.
The company supplies 95 percent of the nation’s power.
The rand also faces risks from labor disputes, a current-account deficit near a four-year high, concern about a widening budget shortfall and a potential downgrade of South Africa’s credit rating, Montalto wrote.
The South African currency has weakened 8 percent this year, the most out of 25 emerging-market currencies monitored by Bloomberg. - Bloomberg News