{"id":1170283,"date":"2022-08-08T10:38:16","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T10:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/08\/standard-poor-downgrades-ghanas-credit-ratings\/"},"modified":"2022-08-08T10:38:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T10:38:16","slug":"standard-poor-downgrades-ghanas-credit-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/08\/standard-poor-downgrades-ghanas-credit-ratings\/","title":{"rendered":"Standard &#038; Poor Downgrades Ghana\u2019s Credit Ratings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Ken Ofori-Atta<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>AMERICAN CREDIT rating agency, Standard and Poor\u2019s (S&#038;P) Global Ratings, last Friday downgraded Ghana\u2019s foreign and local currency sovereign ratings from B-\/B to CCC+\/C.<\/p>\n<p>According to a report by MarketWatch, S&#038;P recorded a negative outlook for the country and argued that the new position is \u201creflecting Ghana\u2019s limited commercial financing options, and constrained external and fiscal buffers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>S&#038;P reportedly claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Ukraine-Russia conflict have magnified Ghana\u2019s fiscal and external imbalances.<\/p>\n<p>The credit rating agency said there had been a high demand for foreign currency, which is driven by factors, including non-resident outflows from domestic government bond markets, dividend payments to foreign investors and higher costs for refined petroleum products.<\/p>\n<p>The report indicated that Ghana had also been affected by a lack of access to Eurobond markets.<\/p>\n<p>The agency said the government had passed a levy on electronic transactions and a legislation to tighten exemptions on tax payments, including for VAT, among other moves to raise local revenue mobilisation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile these changes could improve the tax intake going forward, the situation remains challenging, and over the first half of 2022, the fiscal deficit has exceeded the government\u2019s ambitious target,\u201d S&#038;P reportedly stated.<\/p>\n<p>S&#038;P had affirmed Ghana\u2019s ratings in February, as Moody\u2019s downgraded the African nation to Caa1 with a stable outlook.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BY Ernest Kofi Adu<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!-- AI CONTENT END 2 -->\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Ofori-Atta AMERICAN CREDIT rating agency, Standard and Poor\u2019s (S&#038;P) Global Ratings, last Friday downgraded Ghana\u2019s foreign and local currency sovereign ratings from B-\/B to CCC+\/C. According to a report by MarketWatch, S&#038;P recorded a negative outlook for the country and argued that the new position is \u201creflecting Ghana\u2019s limited commercial financing options, and constrained [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1061681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[1560,4336,250,184,4368,4866],"class_list":["post-1170283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-credit","tag-downgrades","tag-ghanas","tag-poor","tag-ratings","tag-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}