Gigaba: We will reclaim our investment grade
Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba said there can be no guarantees that the country won't be suffering any further credit rating downgrades.
Gigaba briefed the media ahead of his visit to the USA to engage the IMF and World Bank, as well as further interactions with rating agencies, including Moody's.
His trip comes less than a month after Standard & Poor's and Fitch rating agencies downgraded South Africa's sovereign credit rating to junk status.
"We are going to meet with Moody's to give assurance in terms of the policy direction of government, because we will have an opportunity - they are the ones who have not yet downgraded us. The have given us a 90 day review, so we need to engage with them just to have a face-to-face discussion with them," said Gigaba.
Gigaba said they will try and convince international investors, that there will not be any large-scale policy changes.
"We are quite confident that the South African economy is resilient enough and robust and that we are going to climb back to investment grade. The setback that we have suffered thus far are temporary setbacks," said Gigaba.
Gigaba added that the South African government has proven that once a budget is adopted, they stick to it.
"We do believe that the rating agencies are going to understand that and, therefore, the setbacks will only be temporary."