JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's rand was stable against the dollar on Thursday, a day after a pre-election budget that trimmed economic growth and budget deficit forecasts but did little to move the market.
The rand was at 10.8300 to the dollar at 0644 GMT, barely changed from Wednesday's New York close.
Presenting a 1.3 trillion rand ($121 billion) budget on Wednesday ahead of May 7 elections, Gordhan cut this year's growth forecast to 2.7 percent and trimmed the deficit forecast to 4.0 percent of GDP for 2014/15, from 4.1 percent seen in October.
The rand and government bonds weakened marginally after Gordhan's speech and the currency ended the session lower, though analysts said this was largely due to broader pressure on emerging market currencies.
"The biggest issue for the rand is probably the normality of the budget," John Cairns of Rand Merchant Bank wrote in a note.
"This wasn't an austerity budget forced by a collapse of capital inflows. Explicitly, the budget assumes that capital inflows return and remain strong for the near future.
Let's hope they are right."
Government bonds were little-changed, with yields on the 2026 and 2015 paper each inching up 0.5 basis points to 8.545 percent and 7.12 percent respectively.
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