SIKONATHI MANTSHANTSHA: Always in a good Mood(y’s)
The agency has gone out of its way to keep SA at investment grade, thus staving off the inevitable
Spare a thought for the decision-makers and ratings-committee members at Moody’s. Year in, year out, they put their reputations on the line to give SA a break. Everyone needs friends like those. They are not deterred by the overwhelming evidence for a credit downgrade. The ratings agency has again deferred its credit-ratings decision on SA, possibly to see which way the May general elections will go. But the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The ANC will return to form the government, and the looting of public resources will continue unabated. Moody’s is the only one of the three major ratings firms to not dump SA’s sovereign credit rating into junk status. At times seemingly clutching at straws to give us a break, the agency has gone out of its way to keep SA at investment grade, thus staving off the inevitable. Back in November 2017, after S&P Global Ratings and Fitch had downgraded the country to junk status, Moody’s held steady and chose to defer its ratings decision to wait and...
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