Ilustratīvs attēls no pixabay.com
…. so why not report those, especially in these times when most news are very dire indeed?
On 12 March I had my (so far) last official meeting involving other people in the same room as myself. The Fiscal Discipline Council met with the ratings agency, Fitch. Or “met” since the Fitch representatives participated via a link from London.
As always, these ratings agency people talk to a wide selection of institutions: Central Bank Ministry of Finance, commercial banks and what have you and their verdict in the form of a short report was published just a few days ago. Latvia keeps its rating at A- with the outlook changed from stable to negative, which, given the circumstances, should be seen as major endorsement by Fitch.
But, as I also argued recently, Latvia has prepared itself quite well in fiscal terms. Since the financial crisis, government debt has been stabilized and put on a downward trajectory as can be seen from Figure 1. OK, not downwards enough for my more hawkish taste, but not bad and at about 36% government debt as a share of GDP, Latvia has the 7th lowest such ratio in the EU.
