Grey-listing won’t affect SA's rating – Finch

Although SA faces the risk of being grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in February, credit agency Fitch Ratings has said such a move is unlikely to change the country’s rating or ratings outlook, notes a Business Day report. ‘Judging by the grey-listing in other sovereigns ... (it) will be quite unlikely that such a grey-listing will have an impact that is sufficient to change the rating, or even the outlook on SA’s rating,’ said Jan Friederich, head of the Fitch Middle East and Africa sovereign ratings team. ‘In any case, the government has taken measures to avoid grey-listing, and so we would assume that grey-listing, even if it were to occur, would be of a limited duration,’ said Friederich. Nedbank’s head of anti-money laundering, counter financing of terrorism & sanctions, Ofentse Theledi, added that SA would be classified high risk by its trading partners, face potential disinvestment and see increased monitoring by the FATF. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank said it was confident it and the Prudential Authority could demonstrate significant progress and compliance by the end of the year ahead of the FATF’s decision on whether to grey-list SA.