BUSINESS NEWS - South Africa's rand raced to a one-week high on Wednesday as traders bet the currency was poised for a sustained uptrend as political fears eased and the economy shows signs of clawing its way to recovery.

South African shares also rose, led by heavyweight Naspers after its subsidiary Tencent Holdings Ltd trumped forecasts to deliver its best-ever quarterly results.

At 15:00 GMT the rand was 0.73% firmer at 13.2175 per dollar, its strongest since 8 August, shrugging off a warning by Moody's that political turmoil inside the ruling African National Congress risked derailing policy reforms.

"If you look through the political noise, economic fundamentals are pointing to ZAR resilience. We're bullish, not aggressively so but we're seeing the dust settle and the rand testing the downside," said Halen Bothma of ETM analytics.

Data on Tuesday showed South African retail sales rose 2.9% year-on-year in June. Together with trade surpluses for the last five months and a narrowing current account deficit, the short-term outlook for the rand was positive, economists said.

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