Singapore: Moody’s Investor Service’s meetings with Indian government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officials on Monday were pre-arranged and are not linked to the downgrade of the country’s banking sector outlook last week, a senior analyst said on Monday. Moody’s has currently assigned Baa3 rating for India, the lowest investment grade rating, with a stable outlook. “This is a regular annual visit that we have with all governments globally,” Thomas Byrne, the agency’s senior analyst for Asia-Pacific sovereign ratings told Reuters. “The purpose of this meeting is to go to India and kick the tyres… The negative outlook refers to banking sector performance and doesn’t necessarily correlate to sovereign performance,” he added. Moody’s last week cut its outlook for India’s banking system to “negative” from “stable”, and warned that slowing growth at home and overseas were hitting asset quality, capitalisation and profitability. There has been some speculation in the Indian media that the meetings, coming so soon after this move, could suggest that the country’s credit-worthiness is at risk.
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