When will interest rates come down? Not soon

Not only did annual consumer price inflation increase to 5.6% in February, it also exceeded economists' expectations and rose closer to the top of the central bank's 3% to 6% target range.

With this, all hopes of an interest rate cut before the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in July fell away and a number of economists started looking at September as the first opportunity for any easing of the 8.25% repurchase rate.

"The SA Reserve Bank (SARB) will likely easy policy gradually in the second half of 2024, with the first 25 basis points cut expected in September, followed by another 25 basis points cut in November," Jee-A van der Linde, a senior economist at Oxford Economics, said. "The cutting cycle is likely to be gradual and possibly shallow."