International agency Moody’s lowered the sovereign rating of Russia to speculative grade – Ekho Moskvy radio station

International agency Moody's lowered the sovereign rating of Russia to speculative grade – Ekho Moskvy radio station

The main reasons are listed in the Ukraine crisis and falling oil prices. In Moscow, this solution is called political.

For the second international rating agency lowers Russia to speculative. Previously did the same in the Standard & amp; Poor’s. Rating agency Fitch, in turn, is still at the investment level. Sovereign rating reflects the country’s ability to make payments on time for the debts. It makes it difficult to decrease time to market of international borrowing. In Moody’s explained that the situation in the Donbass, as well as the recent shocks to oil prices undermine the Russian economy and medium-term growth prospects, despite the response in the field of monetary and fiscal policy. The decline of the sovereign rating downgrade is usually followed by companies. For many of them – including Rosneft, Sberbank and VTB – access to international capital markets have closed due to the sanctions, said TASS. In turn, an analyst at the Gaidar Institute Vladimir Nazarov in an interview with “Echo of Moscow” reported that Moody’s decision i n the long run on the Russian Economy
not be affected.

In the Finance Ministry, meanwhile, called the downgrade politically motivated. According to the head of department Anton Siluanova, Moody’s was provided with comprehensive information on the state of the Russian economy, which, however, was ignored. “I think … the Agency was guided primarily political factors,” – said Siluanov reporters. He added that the agency considers assessment not only prohibitively negative, but based on an extremely pessimistic outlook, which has no analogues.

According to the forecasts of Moody’s, inflation in Russia this year will exceed 22 percent. The Finance Ministry called groundless such calculations.