Barbados awaits verdict from top credit rating agencies

In the coming month, one of the three top rating agencies in the world will deliver its verdict on Barbados’ credit rating,  Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados Dr Kevin Greenidge said Thursday.

The revelation came following a meeting on Wednesday with Fitch Ratings, one of the three companies assessing the viability of the nation’s investments. 

“We finished with Fitch yesterday. We now have to wait a month or so for them to process all the information we shared with them and give us their verdict,” Dr Greenidge told Barbados TODAY, adding that the bank will be meeting with Standard & Poor’s (S&P) next month and Moody’s later this year. 

“Unlike meetings with the IMF (International Monetary Fund), there is no public communique after these meetings,” he explained.

Barbados currently holds a ‘B’ rating from Fitch, which reported in April that “this strong fiscal backdrop is reflected in the positive outlook on Barbados’s ‘B’ rating. The rate of improvement is moderating with primary surpluses stabilising at around four per cent of GDP and debt reduction continuing, albeit more slowly”.

Moody’s Investors, on the other hand, announced in August last year that it had upgraded the government’s issuer ratings to B3, from Caa1, and maintained a stable outlook. Last October, S&P Global Ratings revised its outlook on Barbados to ‘positive’ from stable, affirming its ‘B-’ long-term and ‘B’ short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings.

Only this past week, a team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) met with various government departments and the central bank to conduct a preliminary assessment of the economy in preparation for a full review in early November. 

“We had a very highly productive interim meeting with the IMF in preparation for the upcoming fourth review that will take place at the beginning of November,” Dr Greenidge reported.

During the talks, the Central Bank provided the IMF team with a detailed explanation and update on the country’s macroeconomic performance and progress made on its structural reform programme, BERT. 

(EJ)