Pakistan's Long-Term Issuer and Senior Unsecured B3 Ratings Placed Under Review for Downgrade

Moody's Investors Service (Moody's) has placed local and foreign currency long-term issuer and senior unsecured B3 ratings of Pakistan under scrutiny for downgrade. This is followed by the expectation that the Government of Pakistan would request for a bilateral official sector debt service relief under the recently launched G20 initiative. According to Moody’s, the suspension of debt service commitments to bilateral government creditors is unlikely to have rating implications and is expected to increase the Government’s fiscal resources to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Further, the G20 has called for creditors from the private sector to volunteer on a comparable basis in this initiative. The review period i...