The South African Reserve Bank has announced emergency liquidity measures in a bid to ease the stress on banks caused by the coronavirus outbreak. The measures, announced on Friday, include a lower rate for commercial banks to borrow money from the SARB. In a statement, the bank said the Standing Facilities lending rate will be adjusted lower to the repo rate, from the prevailing rate of the repo rate plus 100 basis points. It said the measure will support banks to facilitate their flow of money market liquidity without being penalized. Meanwhile, South African telecommunications company, MTN, has agreed to reduce the cost of its monthly data bundles of 1 gigabyte and below by between 25 percent and 50 percent from April. The telecoms company, on Friday, says the decision follows findings that the country’s mobile data prices were the highest on the continent. MTN South Africa said the price of its 1GB monthly data bundle will fall by 33 percent to 99 rand from 149 rand. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/newscast-africa/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices