There are increasing signs that the global economic recovery is building momentum, and is very strong in many instances. We saw this last week with Chinese GDP numbers for the fourth quarter, which grew at an annualised 12.7%. But even in the developed world the signs are looking promising, with good business activity survey numbers out of Japan and Germany, and a promising set of jobless claims numbers out of the US last week.
Continue reading the Daily View here: Daily View 24 January 2011
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank opted to keep the repo rate unchanged at 5.5% yesterday, in a move entirely in line with market expectations. Perhaps of more interest was the MPC’s outlook for inflation, which it upped to 4.6% for 2011 (from 4.3%) and 5.3% for 2012 (from 5.8%). We discuss the monetary stance of the MPC elsewhere in Daily View, but there has certainly been more talk in recent weeks of higher inflation later this year, as a weaker rand and rising commodity prices take their toll.
Continue reading the Daily View here: Daily View 21 January 2011