Israel’s debt rating put on review for downgrade at Moody’s

Israel’s debt rating was put on review for downgrade at Moody’s Investors Service as the violent conflict with Hamas escalates, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.

Moody’s placed Israel’s A1 long-term foreign-currency and local-currency issuer ratings on review, according to a Thursday statement. Previously, the credit assessor’s outlook for the nation was stable.

“Israel’s credit profile has proven resilient to terrorist attacks and military conflict in the past,” wrote analysts Kathrin Muehlbronner and Dietmar Hornung. “However, the severity of the current military conflict raises the possibility of longer lasting and material credit impact.”

The warning follows a similar move by Fitch Ratings, which placed the nation’s credit score on a negative watch earlier this week.

Israel has never been downgraded by any of the major ratings companies, even through conflicts and global economic crises. But its rating was already under pressure before the recent military activity, with credit assessors taking an increasingly dim view of the government’s controversial efforts to weaken the power of the judiciary.