Tito Mboweni makes regaining SA’s investment grade rating a top priority
Main focus to be on enhancing policy certainty and credibility, lowering debt and showing restraint in fiscal support for struggling state-owned companies.
The government was prioritising regaining an investment grade rating on its debt as part of its plans to revive a stagnant economy, finance minister Tito Mboweni said at the weekend. Moody’s Investors Service is the only one of the three major credit-rating agencies that still assesses SA’s debt at investment grade. S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings cut their ratings to junk during former president Jacob Zuma’s tenure, which was characterised by political uncertainty due to cabinet reshuffles and corruption scandals. “It’s priority number one because we have to get out of the status that we are in and back to proper investment grading, and we are working hard at this,” Mboweni said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Argentina on Saturday. “The change will happen because of the things that we need to do ourselves.” Mboweni also said he believed Eskom should rely on bond markets to raise the funds it needs rather than expecting bailouts from t...
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