Rand flat on Friday

The rand was little changed early on Friday, before the release of a whole-economy survey that will shed light on business conditions in Africa’s most industrialised economy.

At 8:33 the rand was trading at R17.08 against the dollar.

The January S&P Global South Africa Purchasing Managers Index is due to be published at 0715 GMT.

The headline PMI reading reflected a slight expansion in private sector activity in November and December, but since the start of the year experts have turned increasingly pessimistic on the growth outlook, with no sign of abatement in crippling power cuts.

Last week the central bank slashed its growth forecasts for 2023 and 2024 to 0.3% and 0.7% respectively, saying power outages could wipe as much as 2 percentage points off this year’s growth.

The global market focus was on US jobs data due later in the day.

Analysts expect US job growth to remain strong in January, but an anticipated further slowdown in wage gains should give the Federal Reserve some comfort in its fight against inflation.