CAPE TOWN - The International Monetary Fund's First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath praised South Africa's central bank for being proactive on raising interest rates to ensure that inflation did not get too high.

Gopinath told Reuters in an interview that the strategy followed by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) was "appropriate," pointing to the fact that inflation was now back within the central bank's target range.

Inflation fell within the 3%-6% band in June for the first time since April 2022.

"We believe that the central bank has done the right things in terms of raising interest rates to … ensure that inflation doesn't go very high," she said on the sidelines of a SARB conference in Cape Town.

(Reporting by Wendell Roelf and Kopano Gumbi; Writing by Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Alexander Winning)