OUTSIDE VIEW
HILARY JOFFE: Moody’s perspective delivers a mild mood boost
Ratings agency isn’t taking the pressure off SA to deliver economic and fiscal reforms
Next time I get really depressed about the state of the economy, I will just take myself off to a Moody's conference. The tone of the ratings agency's annual Sub-Saharan Africa summit in Johannesburg this week was remarkably calm, coming as it did amid bleak economic growth and business-confidence figures, with the rand hitting new lows and markets wondering how bad the fiscal news will be at next month's medium-term budget. Addressing questions from summit participants, the ratings agency's sovereign analysts drew contrasts between SA and the most vulnerable of the emerging markets, telling the "SA is not Turkey or Argentina" story, as rival ratings agency S&P did last week and Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago did in an interview with the Financial Times, in which he emphasised that SA's institutions (such as the Bank) were a great deal stronger than Turkey's or Argentina's. Moody's sovereign analyst Lucie Villa noted that SA's well-developed domestic capital markets meant it...
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