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THE RATINGS AGENCY Standard & Poor’s has described Ireland’s return to the full bond markets as a promising sign of its ability to get back to the bond markets – but isn’t enough to get it to raise Ireland’s credit rating.
The agency said today it was affirming its BBB+ rating for Ireland – it’s seventh-highest rating – saying the rating reflected its view that the Irish government had “commitment and capacity to stabilize Ireland’s public finances”.
“Ireland’s creditworthiness is sustained, in our opinion, by a strong political consensus for fiscal consolidation measures, which should reduce the general government deficit to around 3 per cent of GDP by 2015,” it said.
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Though the agency welcomed last week’s return to bond markets – in which Ireland raised €4.2 billion in loans to be repaid in 2020, and extended the repayment deadline for another €1.2 billion of previous loans – as positive, it remained guarded.
“Our negative outlook on the sovereign reflects our assessment that Ireland’s access to capital markets currently remains restricted,” it said – pointing out that the interest rate on a five-year Irish loan remained at 5.9 per cent.
“This could still be the case when the current EU/IMF program ends in 2013,” it said, pointing to the possibility that borrowing costs may be too high for Ireland to return to the markets full-time when the current funding programme ends.
After last week’s rundraising, Ireland will need to raise €5.9 billion independently of the EU-IMF before the end of next year, in order to cover both the repayment of existing bonds and to plug the gap between its spending and its income.
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That’s what entering the Euro did. It worsened our ability to print money and as a result, we are risky. However, we know S&P is an incompetent rating agency by their failure to predict the global financial crisis. The same rating agencies that gave Lehman a triple AAA on the day they went bankrupt.
ratings agencies are filth.
look what this and other countries have gone through to make themselves more competitive and lower their public expenditure. it suits them for us to have low rating as their clients will receive a higher return on their investment.
Banker: I will give 5 more years of political success (hyperinflated wages, pensions, social welfare) in exchange for your national electricity company
There is an unspoken but implicit part of the S&P statement – we won’t raise your ratings unless it’s in our financial interest to do so. Ratings agencies, in general, are biased and get it wrong more often than right, If they get it wrong you can be assured that they are benefiting from their “error”.
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