JOHANNESBURG - The SA Reserve Bank was surprised by the magnitude of the rand weakness early on Monday but the foreign exchange market conditions were “nowhere near” requiring the bank to intervene, the deputy governor Daniel Mminele said.
The rand slid more than 10 percent to a two-year low against the dollar in early trade as a renewed rout in the Turkish lira spread to other emerging market currencies.
“We certainly were surprised by the magnitude of those moves,” Mminele said, adding that the central bank did not intervene in forex markets with the view to influence the exchange rate towards a particular level.
“If there were to be a situation where we were concerned that there would be huge disruptions in the market to a point where the orderly functioning of the market was in jeopardy, we would consider becoming involved but we are nowhere near those kinds of circumstances,” he said.