Moody’s retain stable outlook on India’s lowest investment rating; warns of macro challenges ahead

05 Dec 2013 Evaluate

International credit rating agency, Moody’s Investors Service, while retaining stable outlook on India’s lowest investment rating, warned of a weak economy, funding challenges, political uncertainties and a scale back of the quantitative easing by the US Federal Reserve, having negative effect on Indian companies.

In its latest credit analysis report, the rating agency highlighted that downward pressure on the rating could develop, if policies that impair the growth and fiscal outlook, were implemented, or if there was a material decline in foreign exchange reserves coverage of external debt and imports. Besides, the rating agency underscored that the country’ s sovereign rating could also be lowered if forex reserves decline significantly, public sector banks asset quality deteriorated further and high inflation persisted.

Further, Moody’s assigned a negative outlook for India’s non-financial corporate, thereby reflecting macro-economic challenges over next twelve months. While, it assigned ‘negative’ outlook for steel, metals and mining, automobile, and oil refining and marketing, it allotted stable outlook to telecommunications, information technology and business process outsourcing, and exploration and production sector.

It further added that it expects country’s GDP growth to remain weak at 5.5% in the fiscal year ending March 2015, mainly because elections could delay reforms needed to revive the economy. Also, it highlighted that India’s investment climate and competitiveness indicators were weaker than those of similarly rated countries. However, it did make a note of increased policy efforts to induce investment in the last year, the impact of which will not be evident in the near term.

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