NSW Triple A

Credit Rating – New South Wales

Standard & Poor's Media Release

The outlook for the State’s credit rating is one key consideration in determining the States’ medium-term fiscal strategy. The State of New South Wales is rated by two internationally recognised rating authorities: Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service Limited.

Both rating agencies provide local currency rating and foreign currency ratings.

• A local currency rating reflects an agency’s opinion of a State’s overall capacity to generate sufficient local currency resources to meet all of its financial obligations (both local and foreign currency).

• A foreign currency rating reflects an agency’s opinion of a State’s overall capacity to meet its obligations in foreign currency. The rating agencies examine the State’s economic structure, and financial performance and outlook, together with the government’s fiscal strategy to derive their ratings in their annual reviews.

• The State of New South Wales has been local-currency rated ‘AAA and Aaa by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service Limited respectively since the inception of State ratings in 1989-90.

• Standard & Poor’s upgraded the foreign-currency ratings for the State of New South Wales from AA+ to AAA on 17 February 2003. The ratings upgrade followed a ratings upgrade from AA+ to AAA on the long-term foreign currency sovereign rating on the Commonwealth of Australia.

• Moody’s foreign currency rating of New South Wales was upgraded from Aa2 to Aaa, also coinciding with an upgrading of the Commonwealth of Australia’s foreign currency rating to Aaa.