APAC Govts To Benefit From Growth Of Emerging, Developing Economies In Asia: S&P Global

The US-based rating agency provided a report titled ‘Asia-Pacific Sovereign Ratings Trends 2024’ and said that the average rating in the region remained between ‘BBB’ and ‘BBB+’.

Asian emerging and developing economies’ growth would continue to be a credit strength for several governments in the region, S&P Global Ratings said. The rating agency said that it estimates to maintain the credit ratings of APAC economies in the next one to two years. 

The S&P provides a sovereign rating to 21 nations in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, out of which 19 countries have a stable outlook. The rating agency provided a ‘BBB-’ rating to India and gave a stable outlook, reported PTI. 

The US-based rating agency provided a report titled ‘Asia-Pacific Sovereign Ratings Trends 2024’ and said that the average rating in the region remained between ‘BBB’ and ‘BBB+’. The agency stated that most sovereign ratings in the APAC region were investment grade and a worsening of the Russia-Ukraine war or the Middle East conflict potentially poses the greatest risk to stable outlooks in the regions. 

The report noted, “The stable outlooks on practically all long-term foreign-currency sovereign ratings in the region (19 out of 21 ratings in Asia-Pacific) suggest there will be few, if any, changes in the next year or so. We expect economic and financial conditions to allow us to maintain ratings on most sovereigns in the Asia-Pacific in the next one to two years.”

Giving an outlook, the agency said that the economic growth in 2024 is potentially not going to be as strong as in 2023, however, it added, that growth would remain resilient in most cases. It projected that exports should increase after a muted year in 2023, while international travel should keep recovering. 

“Growth of Asian emerging and developing economies will still be a credit strength for many governments in the region. We continue to consider several governments in the region to be in economies that are outperformers in terms of trend growth,” S&P Global noted. 

According to the projections given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these economies account for the fastest-growing regional bloc. Notably, S&P estimated the Indian economy to maintain a growth rate of 6.4 per cent in the current and next fiscal years. In the 2022-23 fiscal, the Indian GDP grew at 7.2 per cent.