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BEIJING, February 4. /TASS. The decision of the US Big Three credit rating agencies to cut Russia’s credit rating is politically motivated and disregards the real state of the country’s economy, the president of China’s Dagong said in an interview with TASS on Wednesday.
"We believe that the downgrades of Russia’s rating by the Big Three rating agencies [Standard & Poor's (S&P), Fitch and Moody's] … are politically motivated," Guan Jianzhong said.
In January, China’s Dagong Global rating agency assigned to Russia a "A" rating with a "stable outlook," while the US agencies downgraded Russia to speculative grade. "I believe, there are no preconditions for these downgrades," Jianzhong said.
Comparing the current economic situation in Russia and in the Western countries, Jianzhong said that the crisis in the United States and the European Union is mainly due to domestic rather than external reasons.
"In these countries, unlike Russia, the scale of loans has exceeded the potential of national wealth production, resulting in a "bubble." This crisis has spread across the world due to the policy of quantitative easing and switching on the printing press. All the countries have been forced to pay the price for this," he said.
"The current crisis in Russia has been caused by the Western countries’ sanctions rather than domestic factors," Jianzhong said, characterizing Russia’s economic development as normal.
Unfortunately, the Big Three rating agencies have failed to take these factors into consideration and started advocating the interests of the United States instead, he said.
Dagong has downgraded the US to A-because of Washington’s outstanding debt and the printing press policy, while Russia borrows less and in contrast with the US can pay its debts, he said.
China’s Dagong Global rating agency, one of the leading in the country, was established in 1994 after being approved by the country’s Central Bank and the state committee for economic development.
Dagong’s ratings are recognized by the Chinese government. Dagong became the first agency to have started studying disadvantages in the methods of the US rating agencies in an effort to assess the global economic process more objectively.
The agency describes itself as a force that contributes towards the establishment of a new international system of credit ratings.
