WASHINGTON (MNI) – The following text is Standard & Poor’s outlook
published Wednesday on Germany:
Rationale
The unsolicited ratings on the Federal Republic of Germany reflect
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services’ view of Germany’s modern, highly
diversified, and competitive economy and the government’s track record
of prudent fiscal policies and expenditure discipline. Furthermore, we
believe the German economy has demonstrated its ability to absorb large
economic and financial shocks, including the reunification of West
Germany with East Germany in the 1990s and the global recession in 2009.
The German economy made a relatively solid recovery in 2010,
supported mainly by a strong rebound of net exports and gross fixed
investment. In our view, the German economy’s overall resilience to the
global downturn reflects years of corporate restructuring, wage
restraint, and a high savings rate. These factors have also enabled the
country to generate sizable trade and current account surpluses. In
addition, Germany does not have what we consider to be major strains on
private- or public-sector balance sheets and has therefore avoided the
need for significant private-sector deleveraging and fiscal
consolidation, as experienced by other highly rated sovereigns.
Nevertheless, we expect that domestic consumption will recover only
moderately over the next three years, while the government implements
some fiscal tightening. This will likely place pressure on external
demand to fuel economic growth, which we believe remains susceptible to
a weaker-than-expected global recovery and the ongoing process of
reducing leverage among major trading partners. Consequently, we predict
that real GDP growth will slow through to 2013.
Although Germany’s public finances have worsened as a result of the
recession, the deterioration has been more contained than that of
several ‘AAA’ rated peers, whose steep deficit increases have been more
pronounced and may well persist for longer. The general government
recorded a deficit of 3.3% of GDP in 2010, which was a much better
result than the government had originally expected, largely due to the
relatively strong economic recovery. Nonetheless, the general government
debt burden rose by almost 10 percentage points of GDP to 83%, due to
the inclusion of the obligations of the newly established workout
institutions or “bad banks” (see “Official Adjustment To Germanys
Government Debt Ratio Has No Impact On The Sovereign Rating,” published
on May 2, 2011, on RatingsDirect on the Global Credit Portal).
In view of our forecast of a deficit of 2.8% of GDP in 2011, we
project that Germany’s general government debt burden will remain close
to the current levels until 2013 before trending lower as the deficit
shrinks further. While this level of debt is higher than that of other
‘AAA’ sovereigns, we believe that Germany’s diverse and resilient
economic structure and the government’s cheap access to capital market
funding afford the sovereign a higher debt-bearing capacity than many of
its ‘AAA’ peers’.
The government has outlined a four-year fiscal consolidation
program worth about E82 billion (3.2% of 2011 GDP), more than half of
which will come from spending cuts. The government’s intention with this
program is to enable it to abide by the 2009 constitutional amendment
that limits structural federal government net lending to 0.35% of GDP
per year by 2016 and requires German states to have balanced budgets
over the economic cycle. While similar statutory fiscal constraints have
a poor track record in a number of other countries, we consider that
this framework may be more effective in Germany because it conforms with
the long-standing public and political support for fiscal discipline.
The constitutional limit should also mitigate the consequences of
Germany’s federal system not typically lending itself to swift and
decisive policy decision-making.
Outlook
The stable outlook reflects our view that Germany’s public finances
will continue to withstand potential adverse financial and economic
shocks and that the country’s consensus in favor of prudent budgetary
policies will remain in place. Moreover, our base-case scenario assumes
that, in line with the current government’s plans, fiscal consolidation
will begin this year, and that the general government debt burden will
return to a declining trajectory thereafter. Conversely, the ratings
could come under downward pressure if, contrary to our expectations,
there is a protracted deterioration of the fiscal balance, leading to
persistent growth in the public debt burden.
Germany’s society is aging faster than that of its peer countries,
presenting a future challenge to public finances. Past reforms have
reduced these intertemporal imbalances markedly, and the fiscal cost of
demographic change in Germany is now broadly comparable with that of the
EU as a whole. Nevertheless, we believe further reforms to age-related
spending will be required to ensure the long-term sustainability of
government finances.
** Market News International Washington Bureau: 202-371-2121 **
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