Finance Ministry seeks rating upgrade from Moody’s

15 Nov 2011 Evaluate

Undeterred by last week’s Moody's decision to lower the Indian banking sector’s outlook to ‘negative' from ‘stable’ after the global rating agency felt that slow global economic growth could impact the sector's profitability, the finance ministry on Monday has asked Moody's to upgrade the country's rating, at least two notches higher than the present grade, as there was a marked improvement in its basic economic parameters in the past few years.

A delegation of finance ministry officials led by Department of Economic Affairs Secretary, R Gopalan after a meeting with Moody's representatives  said that ‘Moody's should take a fresh look at the long-term credit strengths of the Indian economy and consider a long due credit rating upgrade for India's sovereign rating,’ The official said that high savings and investment ratio, favourable demographics, infrastructure development and a stable democratic polity were good for India's long-term growth prospects. The meeting was also attended by the Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry, Dr Kaushik Basu, and officers from the Ministries of Finance, Power, Fertiliser and Petroleum and Natural Gas.

R Gopalan asked Moody's to revise India's rating to Baa1, two notches above its current rating. The rating agency had last upgraded India's rating to ‘Baa3’ (with stable outlook) in 2004. Baa3 means medium grade with moderate credit risk. Besides, Moody's had assigned a ‘Ba1' with a positive outlook rating to India's local debt.

‘India has low external debt-to-GDP ratio, high foreign exchange reserves, deep domestic capital markets and diversified domestic holdings of sovereign debt. It outperforms its ‘Baa' peers on these indicators,’ he added.

In the meeting, the finance ministry officials told the rating agency about the policy measures taken by the government, such as fuel price hike, clearing 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail by the Committee of Secretaries and raising of FII investment limit in infra bonds to $25 billion.

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