Fitch has just reaffirmed its triple-A rating on Ireland, saying negative sentiment on the country is overdone.
DUBLIN, March 5 (Reuters) – The Irish government’s quick response to its deteriorating finances is one of the reasons the country still has a triple A credit rating, Fitch ratings agency said on Thursday.
Ireland’s budget shortfall has ballooned to 2 billion euros ($2.52 billion) in Jan-Feb prompting Prime Minister Brian Cowen this week to call for an emergency budget to keep the deficit at 9.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, already the highest in the euro zone. “What we look for is a government that responds quickly and the Irish government has responded more quickly than any other government over the past few months,” Chris Pryce, a director at Fitch, told Reuters in an interview.
“You may say it has more to respond to but (at least) it has been responding quickly and adequately and we expect that to continue.”
That’s in direct contrast to Moody’s, which earlier said that Ireland is one of the most vulnerable triple-A rated countries and is less convinced that the measures taken will be sufficient. In other words, if you ever wanted to know which agency reigns supreme (relatively, of course) when it comes to sovereign credit ratings, now is your chance.
Standard & Poor’s also has Ireland on a negative outlook.
The market anyway, still sees Ireland like this (click to enlarge):
Related links:
I, Ireland – FT Alphaville