The Mexican government published payments made to three securities qualifiers made from 2017 to 2022.
According to an information card issued by the Presidency of the Republic, the three firms (Moody’s, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s) received $300,000 each year for providing services for the analysis, evaluation and determination of the credit quality of the Mexican government.
The Hound: What are qualifiers and what does it mean for Mexico’s perspective to change from stable to negative?
Although the federal government acknowledged that these agencies were contracted to inform the market of real risks to investors and to give an overview of an entity’s ability to pay, it noted that ratings “are not buying recommendations or sale.”
“Its intention is to provide investors and market participants with information related to issuers’ credit risk,” he said in publishing the following table with the costs of each contract.
Payments to qualifiers
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On October 24, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced at a press conference that a report of the amount these agencies receive for their services would be published.
It stated that they were hired by agreements of the Ministry of Finance with financial bodies, to assess the economic, financial performance of the government.
“I understand that at least two qualifiers should be hired, they are paid for that. We have contracts with three; then, we could save ourselves what it costs to pay one. But we don’t and we won’t do it because we don’t want to be thought that qualifiers are being punished or retaliated against; would be a very bad message for financial markets,” he argued.
The president has repeatedly expressed his disagreement with the latest low ratings that the agencies have given pemex and his government.
Read more: Qualifiers punish the country for neoliberal politics that was a failure, accuses AMLO
“We may not agree with what the qualifiers say, as happened when they lowered the rating because of the oil situation and we politely demanded that they had not acted professionally, because they remained silent in the time when the corruption in Pemex and oil production fell – only the year
spent in 200,000 barrels per day – and they didn’t see it; However, we who stopped that fall were downgraded,” he added.
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