Update: And to round out the triumvirate, Moody’s just joined S&P and Fitch in the Turkey downgrade party…
Moody’s downgraded Turkey’s long-term foreign debt rating to Ba3 from Ba2. Additionally, Moody’s shifted the outlook to negative from watch negative.
The key driver for today’s downgrade is the continuing weakening of Turkey’s public institutions and the related reduction in the predictability of Turkish policy making.
That weakening is exemplified by heightened concerns over the independence of the central bank, and by the lack of a clear and credible plan to address the underlying causes of the recent financial distress, notwithstanding recent statements by the government.
The tighter financial conditions and weaker exchange rate, associated with high and rising external financing risks, are likely to fuel inflation further and undermine growth, and the risk of a balance of payments crisis continues to rise.
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Just hours after Fitch fired off the latest rating agency warning shot against Turkey, warning that the actions Erdogan has undertaken so far are “insufficient to restore policy credibility”, traders were keenly looking at the scheduled update of S&P’s BB- rating of Turkey, which with an “outlook negative” would most likely be a downgrade.
Sure enough, moments ago Standard and Poors announced that it had cut Turkey by one notch, from BB to B+, citing its expectation “that the extreme volatility of the Turkish lira and the resulting projected sharp balance of payments adjustment will undermine Turkey’s economy”.
It gets worse, as S&P admits that it “forecasts a recession next year. Inflation will peak at 22% over the next four months, before subsiding to below 20% by mid-2019″. Furthermore, the rating agency anticipates that “2019 will be the first year since 2009 in which nominal credit growth will be less than inflation, implying a major shift in real domestic financing conditions”.
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