Third rating being considered

S&P, Moody’s and Fitch are collectively known as “the Big Three” credit rating agencies in the world. Imbert said this country was given a negative outlook by Moody’s in 2014, 2015. He explained that when this is done, that agency does evaluations on an annual basis, while for countries with a stable outlook, the ratings are not done so frequently.

He said Moody’s changed TT’s outlook from negative to stable, but gave it “a downgrade to the lowest levels of investment grade.” Moody’s suggested that Government reduce expenditure by more than $10 billion per year, he said.

Reiterating that TT had suffered a severe loss of income since 2014, Imbert said, “The country’s income up to a couple years ago was $57 billion per year; it is now $37 billion.” He said Government is using strategies such as reducing expenditure, one-off sales of assets, encouraging foreign investment in the energy sector and withdrawals from the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund to close this $20 billion gap.

Imbert said S&P also upgraded the outlook from “negative” to “stable”, and while it changed the long-term investment grade from A- to BBB+, this is still a high investment- grade rating.

With S&P, Moody’s and Fitch controlling 50, 35 and 15 per cent of world ratings respectively, Imbert said he was advised,”We should also pursue ratings from Fitch.” He said this would mean that: “We have the three largest and most reputable credit agencies in the world rating TT, so there is more balanced perspective on our ratings.” Imbert added that some people believed the rating given by Moody’s was unreasonable compared to that given by S&P.