Standard & Poor’s has affirmed its BBB/A-2 and stable outlook on Andorra.
The agency highlights the important progress achieved by Andorra’s Government on its alignment to global standards and in particular in transposing EU directives for the prevention of money laundering and financial system legislation.
The qualification published by S&P reflects the balance between the country’s economic activity alongside a solid fiscal performance with the size of the Andorran financial sector.
The agency also highlights the solid fiscal framework and the positive economic developments which will allow to maintain Andorra’s net asset position during 2019-2020.
The ratings on Andorra could benefit from the successful completion of the ongoing negotiations for Andorra’s association agreement with the EU and accession to the IMF. While the agency expects that the electoral process will delay the conclusion of both negotiations, it expects the incoming leaders to pick up where their predecessors left off.
Ratings could also benefit from an improvement in the access to public data. In this sense, it positively values the approval of the Statistic Plan for 2019-2021 and the strengthening of the country’s statistical services.
An important milestone was the removal of Andorra from the list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions and the ratification that Andorra’s preferential regimes are not harmful tax practices.