India not immune, may face downgrade, warns S&P

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's today cautioned that it could lower the sovereign ratings of countries like India, Japan and Malaysia, which are still to come out of the economic meltdown of 2008.

"The implications for sovereign creditworthiness in the Asia-Pacific would likely be more negative than previously experienced and a larger number of negative rating actions would follow," S&P said in its report on Asia-Pacific Sovereigns.

"Fiscal capacities of Japan, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and New Zealand have shrunk relative to pre-2008 level," it said, adding that these countries continue to bear the scars of the downturn.

The governments, it said, would be required to use their own revenue streams to support their economies and financial sector once again.

It further said that if a renewed slowdown comes, it would create a deeper and more prolonged impact.

At the time of the global financial crisis in 2008, several countries, including India, had rolled out stimulus packages facilitating monetary expansion and lower taxes to mitigate the impact of the slowdown.

At that time, India had provided three fiscal stimulus packages totalling Rs 1.86 lakh crore, which helped the economy clock a growth of 8% in 2009-10, as against 6.8% in 2008-09. Prior to the crisis, the Indian economy had been expanding at a growth rate of over 9% over a three-year period.

Late on Friday, global ratings agency S&P downgraded its US sovereign rating to AA+ from AAA, with a negative outlook.