JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's rand was steady against the dollar on Wednesday amid hesitant trading before the release of January consumer inflation data.
The rand was at 10.8750 to the dollar at 0614 GMT, in line with Tuesday's New York close, after retreating from a near one-month high of 10.8190 hit earlier in the week.
Statistics South Africa will release January CPI data at 0800 GMT. Economists polled by Reuters expect inflation to accelerate to 5.7 percent year-on-year in January, from 5.4 percent in December.
"Given that we think that the risk lies in an above-consensus reading, we maintain that on balance a buoyant CPI reading should be rand positive from a real interest rate differential," Absa Capital analysts wrote in a note.
The yield on the 2026 government bond inched up 1.5 basis points to 8.61 percent while that on the 2015 paper was 1 basis point higher at 7.16 percent.
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