Int'l agency to start affirming or reviewing Russian credit rating this week - Storchak
MOSCOW. May 21 (Interfax) - Representatives of an international rating agency arrived in Moscow this week to work on affirming or reviewing Russia's sovereign credit rating, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak told reporters.
"A first rating agency will start work as early as this week. I won't say which one, but it is already here," Storchak said, adding that the agency was in Moscow to either affirm or review the country's rating.
The agency's second task, he said, is to see "if it's possible to go further."
The government's economic wing will be "persuading, proving, explaining" that Russia is ready to move to a higher rating level, Storchak said.
"Everyone understands that from the rating level, as though the Financial Stability Board and G20 have not called for less dependence on ratings, by force of habit, business practice of the last several dozens of years for many investors these ratings, which are assigned by professional rating agencies, are the basis for the making of decisions," Storchak said.
The situation will be changing, Storchak said. "Regulators are actively looking in this direction. In many states are being created prerequisites in order to reduce the dependence of managing decisions on rating evaluations. The corresponding recommendations have only just been adopted in the EU," he said. Russia, however, is a less developed jurisdiction from the standpoint of using ratings, so there is a large time gap affecting the potential of these decisions, he said. "But I think we will also be moving in this direction," he said.