Moody's rating upgrade: Congress questions agency's reliability

After U.S.-based International rating agency Moody's Investors Service upgraded India's sovereign rating to Baa2 from Baa3, the Congress party on Saturday raised questions over the reliability of the global credit rating agency who has conducted the surveys.

"The country does not run on such surveys neither the people of this country being astrayed by all this. Firstly, there is no reliability of company who conducted these surveys. Prime Minister Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party has conducted a survey by an American company and claims that everything is fine," Congress leader Anand Sharma told ANI.

However, former Economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das and Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant has hailed India's upgradation by global credit rating agency Moody's.

Earlier in the day, Moody's upgraded India's sovereign rating to Baa2 from Baa3 and changed the outlook to stable from positive, thus providing a much-needed impetus to the Modi government.

Reports suggest that the global rating company said the reforms undertaken by the government would lead to an enhanced business environment, fuelling the foreign and domestic investment, and subsequently the growth momentum. It also noted that the reforms implemented reduced the risk of a sharp increase in debt, even in potential downside scenarios.

However, Moody's argued that measures such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), demonetisation, and others would need time to settle in, and the impact would be witnessed in due course of time. It also claimed that India's growth potential superseded that of many other sovereign nations.