South African Rand Currency

Introduction

The official South Africa unit of currency is Rand and is used as a legal tender. The South African Rand currency code is ZAR and 710 is the numeric code. ZAR represents Zuid afrikaanse Rand, where "Zuid Afrika" is a term used in the Dutch language for the country’s name.

In South Africa it was introduced as the national currency in 1961 and thereby replaced the South African pound. The South African Rand is divided into 100 subunits, which is known as "cent".

The South African currency acquired its name from "Witwatersrand", the white water ridge name onto which the Johannesburg city is constructed and this is the place having majority gold deposits of the South Africa and rand means a ridge. South African rand is shown with the symbol "R" for daily use.

Market trend

South Africa is among the fastest developing countries in the world, but the growth of the nation is on the weaker side. The problems such as unemployment and high poverty prevail dominantly and the same trend is observed in the value of its currency.

In the initial 20 years, the South African rand had higher value than the US dollar; but the fall of the currency value recently was difficult to be covered.

Some industries such as tourism industry and gold mining industry have benefited owing to this fall. However, the currency has attracted many investors and speculators and there are government policies controlling the export and import of the currency.

Structure

South African rand was a newly adopted currency like other modern currencies. However, the issuance and distribution of bank notes and coinage are done by the South African Reserve Bank. The supply and maintenance are the functions of the reserve bank, but major issues such as denominations to be issued or banned are decided by the government of the country.

The South African currency is subdivided into 100 cents and the smaller denominations are available in coins only, but the 1c and 2c coins are hardly used in the daily operations as majority goods come in rounded off values to the nearest 5c.

Rand banknotes are in 5 face values only such as R10, R20, R50, R100 and R200.