JSE error corrected

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Pretoria - The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) says it has been reassured by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) that steps are in place to prevent a reoccurrence of a programming error, which resulted in incorrect data being reported.

In a statement on Monday, the SARB said the JSE had corrected the error, which resulted in incorrect data being reported for the trading of equities by non-residents for the period 31 May to 20 July 2016.

The bank said data for the net purchases of South African bonds by non-residents was not affected by the programming error. Net purchases totalled R7 billion in June and for July to date, they have amounted to R8.6 billion.

“The JSE’s announcement means that incorrect data (combined bond and equity net purchases by non-residents) was quoted in the 21 July statement of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). The incorrect data did not have any bearing on the MPC’s decision,” said the bank.

Last week Thursday, the bank announced its decision to keep the repo rate unchanged at 7%.  The bank also announced its 0% growth forecast in 2016.

The revised data for equity transactions by non-residents, as published by the JSE on Sunday is, May 2016 (net sales of R16.1 billion); June 2016 (net sales of R20.3 billion) and July 2016 to date (net purchases of R50 million).

The incorrect data recorded net purchases by non-residents as R6.4 billion (May 2016); R63.8 billion (June); and R27.9 billion (July to date). – SAnews.gov.za