Moody’s: Greece next step is to return to “A” of the investment tier, the Greek economy may have recovered the investment grade and determined the steps it will follow for 2024 in terms of lending policy, but the “battle” is not over. An important goal next year is to continue the upgrades so that gradually the Greek bonds are rated with “A+” which they had about 15 years ago, but this is not expected to come soon.
What is important is that during the new year, Moody’s will proceed with the upgrade of the Greek economy and give it the investment grade. Earlier, from the new year, Greek bonds will “return” to the Bloomberg Index Services index, which is among the leading global debt benchmarks.
It is typical that in recent years Greece has registered significant upgrades and the better than expected macroeconomic and fiscal performances have contributed very significantly.
The goal is, as the Bank of Greece (BoG) emphasizes in its recent report, for Greece’s credit rating to converge towards the average corresponding rating of the Eurozone economies (i.e. “A+”), a rating our country had before the debt crisis.
The continuation of the reforms is another important factor which is evaluated by the houses. Based on the BoE, possible successful interventions in the areas of justice and public administration, combined with the maintenance of political stability, the continuation of prudent fiscal policy and the strengthening of the resilience of the Greek economy, could push Greece’s credit rating to levels above category A.
In order to achieve A+, however, additional improvements are required in parameters such as the institutional parameters of credit ratings, which have a very important contribution, due to the diffusion of the benefit in economic activity. These include, among others, the improvement of the ranking of the economy in the governance indicators of the World Bank. The convergence of just the ranking in the governance indicators towards the average ranking of the Eurozone economies would add an additional 1.5 points.