Prime Minister: Credit rating agencies recommendations too fast

At a cabinet meeting on Friday, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said that "the latest report by the Moody's credit rating agency says that as far as they are concerned, we are on the right track but that we are not going fast enough."

If we were to go at the recommended speed we could be faced with the danger of going too fast without having the appropriate conditions to do so, he said.
He added that credit agencies recommend accelerated and radical changes which then is a matter of society and human relations and what a certain society wishes to achieve and accept.
I am sure that not one European government agrees in total with rating agencies, said Milanovic.


The outlook is stable and what is important is that this rating relates to government bonds and that rating is more than favourable than ever because if we were to now release government bonds on the US or Japanese market, we would be required to pay a lower interest rate than we would have had to a year ago, he said.

Milanovic assessed that rating agencies are "simply very ambitions and sometimes insatiable" and exclusively directed to the interests of speculative investors.
The government needs to be directed to the interests of Croatian society which doe not mean that they are incompatible, but are not the same as those of rating agencies.
Moody's on Friday downgraded Croatia's credit rating to Ba1 from Baa3, citing poor economic growth prospects and a lack of the government's fiscal flexibility.
The agency also changed the outlook on Croatia's rating from negative to stable, citing only a limited risk of a significant deterioration of the government's fiscal position and debt.


(Hina)



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