Arthur Kamp News Today

The repo rate has been left at 8.25% for a year now after it was increased by 50 basis points in a shocking move in May last year.

Consumers are holding their breath to hear if the repo rate will be cut on Wednesday as they struggle to pay their debts.

Higher oil prices and weak rand to push prices to new records this year. Add load shedding, and the cost to produce and buy food goes up too.

Indebted consumers can sleep easier tonight knowing the repo rate did not change, but people with savings will not benefit.

Will the MPC hike the repo rate or not? This is the question o everyone’s lips now that inflation fell to well below the Sarb upper limit.

Overall, it cannot be guaranteed that we have reached the top of the interest rate hiking cycle, writes Arthur Kamp.

Cash-strapped South Africans are in even more trouble with the repo increasing to its highest since 2009 and the rand reaching its lowest point ever.

All signs point to SA entering a technical recession in the first quarter – ahead of the US, where economic fortunes have turned around the prospects of a recession in the first half of this year and in contrast to South Africa’s fall from grace in the last few weeks.

All signs point to SA entering a technical recession in the first quarter – ahead of the US, where economic fortunes have turned around the prospects of a recession in the first half of this year and in contrast to South Africa’s fall from grace in the last few weeks.

In an action-packed week, the good news outweighed the bad and financial markets largely discounted a deterioration in geopolitical relations, instead focusing on the well-received South African Budget and poring over US Fed meeting minutes for signs of interest rate certainty.