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January 19, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 28
bne:Credit Moody’s raises
Mongolia to B3
Moody's Investors Service on January 18 raised Mongolia's long- term issuer ratings and senior unsecured ratings from Caa1 to B3 with stable outlooks.
The rating agency cited easing external pressures and liquidity in the country for its decion to raise the ratings. Mongolia’s economy was hit in 2016 by low commodities prices and high government spending, resulting in only 1% growth that year. However, the country’s economy is heading towards recovery - Mongolia recorded 4.5% growth in the first nine months of 2017 partly on the back of rising demand for Mongolian coal in China and partly due to the $5.5bn International Monetary Fund-led (IMF) bailout deal.
“GDP growth surprised on the upside in 2017. Moody's now estimates that GDP increased by 4.2% in 2017 and [will grow by] 3.3% in 2018,” the statement said. “This denotes some capacity of the economy to respond to a favourable external environment, and a greater resilience to fiscal and monetary policy tightening than we previously estimated.”
The decline in non-performing loans (NPLs) in Slovenia is among the fastest in the EU, according to figures revealed by European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis on January 18.
The bad loans ratio in Slovenia has been declining since 2013, when the country nearly avoided an international bailout because its banks were overburdened by non-performing loans (NPLs). At end-2016 the share was 8.5%, and it had fallen further to 6.7%
in November 2017 according to the new harmonised definition of the European Banking Authority (EBA), the Slovenian central bank Banka Slovenije announced on January 17.
Dombrovskis said that Slovenia is among the best EU members in terms of the proportionate reduction of the share of non- performing loans as well as that its banks had enough reserves to cover potential future losses.
Decline in NPLs in Slovenia among the fastest in the EU