Credit rating agency Moody’s on Friday revised its outlook on South Africa (SA) to positive from stable, citing strengthening fiscal performance and progress on structural reforms.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It, however, maintained \u200cthe country’s long-term foreign and local currency issuer ratings at “Ba2”. SA’s government welcomed the decision.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Africa’s most industrialised economy has, for more than a decade, grappled with steadily rising public debt, driven by weak growth, repeated support for state-owned companies, and the impact of the \u2060COVID\u201119 pandemic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While investor sentiment has improved on signs of fiscal discipline from the finance ministry, the Iran war has clouded the growth outlook for net-energy importers such as SA, which remain highly vulnerable to rising fuel prices.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The ratings agency said the positive outlook reflected a rising primary surplus, improving debt service costs, and expectations that government debt would stabilize in the near term and begin a gradual decline.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SA’s \u2060heavy debt burden, interest payments for which eat away a large share of its revenue, is slowly easing as the government reins in spending, boosts tax intake, and pushes reforms to revive growth and curb borrowing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Despite the \u2060improved outlook, Moody’s said SA’s ratings remained constrained by factors including weak fiscal and economic fundamentals, low growth potential and high inequality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Moody’s added that continued \u2060fiscal discipline could eventually put the debt burden on a clearer downward path.<\/p>\n
S&P Global upgraded SA’s sovereign rating to “BB” from “BB-” in \u2060November, handing the country its first credit rating upgrade in nearly 20 years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":35206,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-35205","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Credit rating agency Moody's on Friday revised its outlook on SA to positive from stable","published_date":"2026-05-23 09:03:39","news_description":"Credit rating agency Moody's on Friday revised its outlook on South Africa (SA) to positive from stable","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35207,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35205\/revisions\/35207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=35205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}