S&P affirms Britain's AAA rating, maintains negative outlook

Source: Xinhua net

LONDON, April 5 (Xinhua) -- Standard & Poor's (S&P), an international credit rating company, on Friday affirmed Britain's AAA sovereign credit rating, but maintained its "negative" outlook, leaving the landmine of downgrading in the future.

"We believe that the government will implement its fiscal mandate and that it has the ability and willingness to respond rapidly to economic challenges," S&P said in a statement issued in London.

The outlook reflects "our view of at least a one-in-three chance that we could lower the ratings if the UK's economic and fiscal performances were to weaken beyond our current expectations," S&P added.

The rating company also expected that the 2.43-trillion-U.S. dollar economy will grow on average by 1.6 percent a year from 2013 to 2016.

British Treasury responded that the S&P statement is a "reminder that our country cannot afford to simply run away from our problems."

British government cut its growth projection for this year from 1.2 percent to 0.6 percent on March 20 and expected the government's net debt to begin falling in 2017-2018 fiscal year, a year later than previous planned.

S&P placed British rating on a negative outlook last December.

Moody's, another credit rating agency, however, cut British treasured triple-A rating by one notch in February, as it felt pessimistic on the country's economic growth and fiscal consolidation outlook.