At about 11pm on Friday night, S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s are scheduled to release their latest verdicts on the creditworthiness of South African government bonds. On Thursday at about 5.30pm, Fitch held SA’s sovereign credit rating at the BB+ "first tier of junk" level it downgraded the country to on April 7. Fitch maintained its outlook at stable, and the outlooks of the big three ratings agencies are important clues as to their next actions. The ratings agencies tend not to downgrade countries before giving their governments three to six months’ notice, which is done by lowering their outlooks. Moody’s tends to lower its outlook from "negative" to "negative watch", while S&P and Fitch lower theirs from "stable" to "negative". When they downgrade — as all big three ratings agencies were prompted to do by President Jacob Zuma’s disastrous Cabinet reshuffle on March 31 — they tend to raise their outlooks a notch to indicate their new rating is correct for the time being. For ins...
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