Fitch Ratings has upgraded the issue ratings on Tunisia’s long-term foreign- and local-currency notes to ‘CCC+’ from ‘CCC’, it said in a statement Thursday.
The upgrade corrects an error in the application of the Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) to the relevant issue ratings at the time of the last review on 1 December 2022, it added.
Under applicable credit rating agency (CRA) regulations, the publication of sovereign reviews is subject to restrictions and must take place according to a published schedule, except where it is necessary for CRAs to deviate from this schedule in order to comply with the CRAs’ obligation to issue credit ratings based on all available and relevant information and disclose credit ratings in a timely manner.
Fitch interprets these provisions as allowing it to publish a rating review in situations where there is a material change in the creditworthiness of the issuer or issues that it believes makes it inappropriate for it to wait until the next scheduled review date to update the rating or Outlook/Watch status.
The next scheduled review date for Fitch’s rating on issues of Tunisia is June 9, 2023, but Fitch believes that the recent identification of an error with regard to these issue ratings warrants such a deviation from the calendar.
