Moody’s raises Greece’s rating as reforms bring progress

Moody’s Investors Service raised Greece’s sovereign credit rating by one notch, despite the negative effect of the pandemic on the economy and the new three-week lockdown that started on Saturday morning.

The Mediterranean country’s long-term foreign-currency debt was upgraded to Ba3 with a stable outlook from B1, the first change since March 2019. “Ongoing reforms support a sustainable improvement in institutional strength and have already brought tangible progress in areas including tax administration and compliance and the fight against corruption,” Moody’s said in a statement.

The Moody’s decision, “which came in the midst of a global recession, is a strong vote of confidence in the growth prospects of the Greek economy post Covid,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a Twitter post Saturday.

The Greek government won international praise for its handling of the first phase of the pandemic in the spring. Following a surge in the number of coronavirus cases over the past week and a continuous increase in the occupancy rate of intensive-care units, the government decided to impose a new lockdown until the end of November in an attempt to return to a “relatively normal December,” the premier said Thursday.

Source: Bloomberg