Greenback Soars Up Versus South African Rand

The US dollar soared up against the South African rand on Thursday's trading and jumped to a 2-day high of 7.5350 at about 11:00 am ET. At present the greenback is trading near 7.4917 versus the rand. The dollar-rand pair was worth 7.3312 at yesterday's close. On the upside, 7.5572 is seen as the next target level for the US currency.

Today, the Statistics South Africa announced that the producer price index or PPI for domestic output decreased 3.3% year-on-year in October, compared to the 3.7% decline in the previous month. Economists expected a decrease of 3.1%.

On a monthly basis, producer prices fell 0.1% in October, in contrast to a 0.1% growth expected by economists.

Meanwhile, producer prices for exported commodities fell 13.1% on an annual basis in October, after falling 11.2% in September. At the same time, import prices were down 10.2%, slower than the 16.2% decline in the preceding month.

Month-on-month, export prices climbed 0.8% in October, while import prices fell 0.5%.