Moody's, Standard & Poor, and Fitch's "oligopoly" should be broken up, India's CEA V Anantha Nageswaran demanded, casting doubt on the global rating agencies' approach.
Even though India's economy has grown over the past 15 years to become the fifth biggest in the world, the agencies still rate it as having the lowest investment grade. Nageswaran is shocked by this and believes that rating agencies' over focus on qualitative factors is the reason for the poor rating.
Nageswaran questioned their sources of information and approach in an interview with Hindu Businessline. The World Bank's World Governance Index is a source of information used by rating agencies; he described it as "very problematic" since information is given by "think-tanks or research bodies sitting in some European countries," rather than by the countries being evaluated.
WGI was dubbed "opaque" by Nageswaran because it ignores a nation's level of development. India has frequently criticized the over-reliance on opaque qualitative elements in sovereign rating, such as opinions expressed by a small number of specialists, perceptions, value judgments, and surveys with sloppy methodology, which they claim produce results that are undesirable on a global scale.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had stated that rating agencies should take notice of the government's improvements to the fiscal consolidation plan in addition to its alignment with it at her post-budget news conference.
India has long harbored complaints about rating agencies
The finance minister at the time, Arun Jaitley, had voiced displeasure with the international rating agencies in 2016. "I must acknowledge and state that the kind of steps we have taken, we still have not got from international agencies the full recognition of the effort we have put in," he stated.
The chief economic advisor at the time, Arvind Subramanian, had called attention to the "poor standards" of the rating agencies in the Economic Survey 2016–17. In order to offer a different perspective from the three Western rating agencies, he has advocated for the establishment of an independent BRICS nations rating agency with the goal of developing suitable ratings criteria for the emerging market economies.
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