Rates steady as inflation starts to bite

South Africans should count themselves lucky the interest rate was kept unchanged yesterday. Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago said in Pretoria that the monetary policy committee had decided to keep the repo rate at 5.75% and the prime lending rate at 9.25% "for now".Despite inflation reaching its lowest level in four years last month, Kganyago said the best he could do at the moment was to "pause" interest rate increases.