South African Rand falls as police face protestors

The South African Rand weakened yesterday due to social behaviour rather than economic data – as their Finance Minister Nene was delivering their mid-term budget, police had to deal with groups of protestors outside; they fired stun grenades in an attempt to subdue the crowds. This outbreak, coupled with the less convincing comments in Nene’s speech, contributed to a drop of 1.8% against the dollar yesterday. This contributes to the overall 14% loss against the American currency this year. Unfortunately the future doesn’t look any brighter, as the South African government have stated that debt will likely be at 49% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by March 2016.

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