Luis Angel Hernandez
12/11/20 08:53
Ha respondido al tema Cronologia del rescate a Grecia
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Annalisa Piazza, analista de renta fija de MFS Investment Management, sobre el aumento por parte de Moody's de la nota crediticia de la deuda griega. An upgrade of the Greek debt during the current phase of the pandemic was not expected as risks around long-term scars of the ongoing crisis are still well alive. As in the case of the change in Italy's outlook by S&P's two weeks ago, rating agencies seem to look through the overall short term impact of the pandemic and focus more on medium term drivers and – in the case of Greece – on the substantial structural improvements that continued despite the pandemic. Recently, we have often stressed on how the Greek government has moved promptly to both make sure the economy could face the pandemic limiting long term impacts due to its weaknesses (i.e. moving early with national restrictions to avoid a collapse of the health system) and – at the same time – made sure that quick action was taken to return to its medium term objectives of implementing structural reforms (i.e. reform programme has restarted in the early summer without letting the pandemic being on its way). Greece's strategic views seem to have paid off as the country continues to take steps forward to gain international credibility, taking full advantage of being part of the Eurozone. Moody's rationale behind the upgrade is two-fold:• Risks of a reversal of the ongoing improvement is low. Governance factors have improved considerably and – from an ESG perspective – Greece's G factor is now ranked higher than its similarly-rated peers.• The role of Europe and its institutions (namely the Recovery Fund and the ECB) is crucial for Greece's debt sustainability in the medium term. The RF allows Greece to continue and strengthen its investment programme. Purchases of GGBs by the ECB under the PEPP programme reinforce the idea that Greece's sustainability of debt is not under additional pressure due to some possible short term risk off movements. Despite Moody's moving Greece's rating by 1-notch, the country's remains below IG status. However, we would anticipate a quicker action towards IG by rating agencies in the next 2 years or so should the country cyclical momentum manage to support the improvement on the structural side of the equation. The country has all the incentives to continue to build up its credibility with foreign investors as – not only it is highly dependent on the tourism industry – but increasing FDI is crucial to support the economy in the medium term.Markets will welcome the upgrade by Moody's and we would anticipate more compression in the already tight spreads both vs core and the rest of the periphery.