South African bourse published incorrect data on equities trading: c.bank

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) published incorrect data on foreigners trading of equities from May 31 to July 20 due to a programming error, the central bank said on Monday. The bank said incorrect data had been quoted in the July 21 statement of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) but the error did not have any bearing on the committee's decision to keep the benchmark lending rate unchanged. The JSE said a hitch affecting the manner in which it extracted statistical data from its core transactional systems had caused the error. It removed the erroneous data and said updated statistics would be available by 1500 GMT. Data for the net purchases of South African bonds by non-residents was not affected by the programming error. The central bank said the revised data for equity transactions by non-residents was net sales of 16.1 billion rand ($1.13 billion) for May 2016, net sales of 20.3 billion rand for June 2016 and net purchases of R0.05 billion for July 2016. The incorrect data showed net purchases by non-residents of 6.4 billion rand for May 2016, and 63.8 billion rand for June and 27.9 billion rand for July to date. ($1 = 14.2921 rand) (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by James Macharia)