Standard and Poor’s keeps Indonesia’s sovereign debt rating at BB+ (Photo: theguardian.com)Jakarta (VNA) – Standard and Poor’s (S&P), an international ratings agency, announced it kept Indonesia’s sovereign debt rating at BB+ due to poor fiscal performance, according to the Jakarta Post and Jakarta Global.
S&P expects Indonesia to keep its fiscal deficit target below 3 percent of GDP. Indonesia’s 2015 GDP stood at 833 billion USD.
Experts from the Bank Central Asia and the CIMB Group noted that S&P’s decision not to upgrade the rating to BBB would not have a huge impact but was a setback for the country’s economy, which slowed to its weakest level of growth in six years at 4.79 percent in 2015.
In a bid to improve income, the House of Representatives is discussing a tax amnesty programme to help lure back 560 trillion rupiah (41 billion USD) of assets stashed overseas, thus boosting economic growth to 5.4 percent.
S&P is the only major global debt rating agency that rates Indonesia’s sovereign bonds below investment grade. Other global agencies, including Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, have maintained investment-grade ratings for the country’s sovereign credit for years.-VNA
