Premier: Rating Affirmation by Fitch Agency Is Good News
The affirmation of Slovakia's rating by Fitch at A- with a stable outlook is a good news that has received little media attention, Premier Robert Fico told a news conference on Sunday.
Bratislava, 10 May (TASR) - The affirmation of Slovakia's rating by Fitch at A- with a stable outlook is a good news that has received little media attention, Premier Robert Fico (Smer-SD) told a news conference on Sunday, adding that that Fitch had essentially acknowledged that the consolidation of public finances is delivering results.
"I think that Slovakia's credit rating, which was affirmed on Friday (8 May), is a major slap in the face for you, the media, but also for NGOs and the anti-Slovak, anti-government opposition," stated the premier. Concerning the previous downgrade of Slovakia's rating by Standard and Poor's (S&P) agency by one notch from A+ with a negative outlook to A with a stable outlook, Fico claimed that he neither underestimates nor overestimates the assessments by rating agencies, but maintained that Slovakia is a reliable financial partner. As evidence, he cited the sale of government bonds for 700 million Swiss francs. "If the financial markets did not trust us, then no one would buy anything from us," he said.
According to the premier, the Coalition Council should meet on Thursday (14 may) to decide on measures to support the economy. "We want to go through a whole range of pro-growth measures, i.e. measures that should help economic growth, although the headwinds coming from abroad are so strong that we can even tear ourselves apart, but have no chance of overcoming them," stressed the premier. Fico specified that the proposals will mainly concern measures that do not have a fundamental impact on the state budget. The coalition will consider the other proposals later, once all forecasts and all the information required for the preparation of the 2027 state budget are available.
Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicky (Smer-SD) illustrated the successes of the current government by comparing the planned deficit of Ludovit Odor's caretaker government for 2024, set at 6.51 percent of GDP, with Slovakia's real deficit in 2025, amounting to 4.45 percent of GDP. Odor's administration was replaced by the current coalition in the autumn of 2023. According to Kamenicky, the government has thus consolidated public finances by 2.06 percent of GDP. Following revisions by the Statistics Office, the real deficit stood at 5.5 percent of GDP in 2024 and 5.19 percent of GDP in 2023. The minister claimed that if the Slovak government had not consolidated, we would currently have a deficit of over 7 percent of GDP and Slovakia's debt would be 11 percentage points higher.
