The S&P Global Ratings announced on May 21 that it has retained Vietnam’s sovereign credit rating, improving its economic outlook to 'positive' from 'stable'.
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Our own sovereign rating actions since March 2020 have taken into consideration the nature of the shock triggered by this public-health crisis – massive, but exogenous and temporary – and how well countries have been able to respond to it. For now, monetary and external flexibility as well as economic resilience are better indicators of sovereign creditworthiness than a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio.
Globally, we have downgraded nearly a quarter of the sovereigns we currently rate. Most are lower-rated emerging- or frontier-market borrowers that had pre-existing vulnerabilities and less financial resilience and flexibility to deal with COVID-19 and its economic consequences. This includes seven defaults, all by sovereigns that were at the lower end of our rating scale (“B” or below) before the pandemic.
At the beginning of 2021, when S&P Global Ratings forecast Indian gross domestic product growth at 11% for the coming financial year, the number looked eminently achievable. Last month, the Goods and Services Tax a good barometer of economy activity hit 1.41 trillion rupees ($19.1 billion), its highest ever monthly collection. Indeed, it’s been higher than the benchmark Rs. 1 trillion for seven consecutive months and higher than the same month for the last year for eight consecutive months.
India’s international merchandise trade reached $34 billion in March, the highest ever, and stayed over $30 billion in April. Many short-term economic indicators auto sales, electricity consumption, highway toll collection were also pointing to a strong recovery after a crushing 2020.
Philip Morris International Scored 60 On ESG Evaluation; Preparedness Adequate
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LONDON, May 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ (S&P Global Ratings) S&P Global Ratings said today that U.S.-listed Philip Morris International (PMI) scored 60 in its ESG Evaluation. On our scale, 100 indicates the lowest risk and 0 the highest. The company s ESG Evaluation score is the result of an ESG profile of 57 combined with adequate preparedness.
PMI s ESG Evaluation score of 60 reflects our view of the company s long-term ambition to switch smokers to potentially reduced-risk products, and its targeted actions to address environmental and social concerns in its supply chain, which we see as positively differentiating PMI from its peers. In our view, PMI s ambition to encourage smokers to use reduced-risk tobacco products will help it mitigate some of the social risks to which it is exposed as a tobacco company.