Economist welcomes Fitch's decision to keep S. Africa's investment-grade credit status

A renowned economic expert on Wednesday welcomed international rating agency Fitch's decision to spare South Africa's sovereign credit rating of junk status.

"These are the positive outcomes. Many had expected Fitch to downgrade South Africa's rating to negative from stable, but Fitch keep the country's credit status as stable," said Dr Azar Jammine, the director and chief economist of Econometrix, one of the leading independent economic research, consultancy and forecasting company in South Africa.

"That is good news because we now have until December for Fitch to release some other results and a lot will happen in between," he told Xinhua.

Fitch on Wednesday affirmed South Africa's investment-grade credit status.

Fitch said in a statement that it has affirmed South Africa's Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) at 'BBB-' and 'BBB', respectively.

The Outlooks on the Long-Term IDRs are Stable, while the Short-Term Foreign-Currency IDR is affirmed at 'F3', said Fitch.

The decision pushed the rand to rise to its firmest in just over a month.

By 13:45 local time, the rand strengthened by 1.13 percent to R14.47 against the U.S. dollar, its firmest since May 4.

On Friday, Standard & Poor Global rating also maintained South Africa's investment grade BBB-rating, strengthening the rand and helping boost investor's confidence.

In May, another ratings agency, Moody's also refrained from downgrading South Africa's rating.

The latest developments are contrary to wide expections that South Africa's rating would be downgraded to junk status.

The fact that the three major rating agencies have not downgraded the country to junk status is a relief for the South African government, at least for the time being, said Jammine. Endit