Netherlands Downgraded to AA by S&P

Standard & Poor’s lowered its credit rating for the Netherlands to AA plus from AAA on Friday, while lifting its outlook for the struggling economies of Spain and Cyprus.

Moritz Kraemer, chief sovereign ratings officer at S&P, told CNBC that the Netherlands’ downgrade by the S&P ratings committee was triggered by the country’s weak economic growth prospects.

“We see that both in recent history and in our projections, that the economic dynamism of the Dutch economy will lag behind what we would usually expect for sovereign economies at that level of development and prosperity,” he told CNBC on Friday. “So this has been the immediate trigger for the ratings decision.”

The agency’s report said it expects the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to contract by 1.2 percent in 2013, before growing by 0.5 percent in 2014 and slowly accelerating to 1.5 percent by 2016. It argued that real economic output for the country will not surpass 2008 levels before 2017.

The cut means the only euro zone countries to retain their AAA rating at S&P are Finland, Germany and Luxembourg.
via CNBC

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.