Jaswant Singh slams credit rating agencies

Expressing concern over the lack of accountability of  rating agencies, the top BJP leadership today sought options from experts to control them. Former Finance Minister and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh, slamming rating agencies for wrong predictions, saying, "These agencies got all wrong. Iceland was given a rating of AA while India's economy was given a BBB rating as favoured business destination. Look at what happened to Iceland now. But India is still stable. Earlier, East Asian countries were similarly given better ratings than India but they too collapsed a few years ago." 
 
As Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram listened patiently, Singh questioned why, despite wrong ratings, these rating agencies are allowed to get away. "These agencies pretend to know everything. But certainly, they can't know better than the government. In the case of banks, the ratings are even worse. Most of the institutions which have been given very high ratings have all tumbled."
 
While Singh sought a remedy from the economists present in the House he also asked the government to explain how it would manage $6 billion required to be borrowed for infrastructure development in the next few years during this current global crisis.