The SARB is set to announce its decision on whether or not to decrease the repo rate even further, this Thursday, the 23rd of May. The repo rate has been stable, at an unprecedented low of 5%, since the Monetary Policy Committee meeting of July 2012. At present no one is seriously expecting Reserve Bank governor, Gill Marcus, to lower either the repo rate or the prime interest rate (which currently sits at 8.5%) before October, at the earliest. "The question isn't whether the MPC will lower the repo rate now, which I don't expect them to, but rather whether now isn't perhaps the time to do it", says Jan le Roux, CEO of Leapfrog Property Group. Andre Mellet, economics lecturer at the Northwest University's Vaal Triangle Campus, told Business Day that there are a number of compelling arguments for a rate cut: the growing unemployment figures, the slow growth rate of the SA economy as well as the deficit on the government's budget are all good reasons to...