domestic fx market. the south african foreign exchange committee during the past year, we have made further progress in promoting high ethical and professional standards in support of fairness, integrity and thus the reputation of our foreign exchange market. 4 bloomberg median forecast as at 12 november 2018 page 6 of 8 following the establishment of the global foreign exchange committee ( gfxc ) in 2017, of which south africa is a member, the sarb facilitated the establishment of a stand - alone local foreign exchange committee, the south african foreign exchange committee ( safxc ). this forum consists of a wide range of key professionals involved in the domestic wholesale fx market ( including authorised dealers, the interdealer broker community, the association of savings and investment south africa, the banking association, and others ). its purpose is aligned to that of the gfxc, which is to promote a robust, fair, liquid, open and appropriately transparent fx market, in which a set of diverse participants is able to transact confidently and effectively at competitive prices that reflect available information, and in a manner that conforms to acceptable standards of behaviour. 5 the key activity in giving effect to this is providing guidance to the local fx market by endorsing and upholding the fx global code ( global code ), and encouraging adherence to it. the safxc has launched various outreach programmes aimed at creating public awareness and promoting the code to the broader fx market community. members of the safxc have been reaching out to their respective constituencies in the fx market ( and hopefully to all of you here present ), encouraging them to endorse the global code and commit to it by publishing a statement of commitment. to date, all the safxc members have endorsed the global code and have published their respective statements of commitment. by way of leading by example, since 01 september 2018 in its foreign exchange operations, the sarb only deals with counterparties, both local and offshore, that have endorsed the global code through the issuance of statements of commitment. the outreach programmes by the safxc should be viewed as a collaborative initiative by the public and the private sectors aimed at strengthening the integrity and effectiveness of the domestic wholesale fx market, and should be supported by all of us. if your institution is an active participant in the fx market but has not endorsed the global code yet, i would like to encourage you to review your fx market operation practices and align them with the principles of the global code so

subsequently it has fallen back again and was trading between 85 cents to 90 cents at the beginning of october. although it did have this immediate impact, it is doubtful if this one - off intervention will have the desired effect over a longer time period. intervention normally only works if it is aimed at stopping speculative capital flows, if it signals a change in underlying policies, if it is strongly supported by all parties participating and if the central banks are prepared to intervene repeatedly and in large amounts. these are also the main reasons that the south african reserve bank did not intervene in the foreign exchange market. in fact the reserve bank has continued to buy small amounts of dollars in the market to improve its net oversold open position in foreign exchange. after this position had improved from us $ 23. 2 billion at the end of september 1998 to us $ 10. 3 billion at the end of march 2000, the bank continued to bring this position down slowly to us $ 9. 6 billion at the end of september 2000. this was part of the reserve bank ’ s objective to reduce its net open position in foreign exchange to zero, in order to remove one of the perceived risk factors in the economy. any intervention in the foreign exchange market to support the exchange rate of the rand may well have made the downward pressure on the value of the rand worse, in view of this risk factor. the success of such intervention would in any case have probably also been thwarted by the general strength of the us dollar. 5. concluding remarks as could be expected, the depreciation of the rand and the substantial rise in energy and food prices affected price increases in south africa. for example, the year - on - year increase in the cpix accelerated from 6. 5 % in october 1999 to 8. 2 % in august 2000. if fuel and food prices are excluded, cpix inflation declined slightly from 6. 8 % to 6. 6 % over the same period. similarly, the year - on - year increase in production prices accelerated from 5. 7 % in september 1999 to 10. 1 % in april 2000, and then declined slightly to 9. 3 % in august 2000. however, if energy and food priced are omitted, the year - on - year increase in production prices has continued to accelerate from a low of 3. 2 % in november 1999 to 5. 3 % in august 2000. this upward trend was mainly due to increases in the prices of imported goods, while domestically generated inflation has shown a declining tendency from