Today Newspaper St. Maarten

Shigemoto meets rating agencies

St. Maarten – Finance Minister Hiro Shigemoto met with representatives of Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poors in New York recently as part of a process to come to a credit rating and/or sovereign country rating. A decision must now be made whether one or two of the companies will be selected to do the analysis.

“This is important for many different reasons, among which, to establish country St. Maarten in the financial capital world once the rating has been completed and published. A credit rating will open opportunities in the market for our country to attract project financing and debt financing. Once one or two firms have been selected, they will go through the financial figures and statistical information related to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), debt to GDP ratio, GDP per capita income and much more. Government is looking forward to this being completed as soon as possible,” Shigemoto said on Tuesday upon his return to the island.