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Country Risk Assessments Update: April 2022

This report does not constitute a rating action.

This article presents S&P Global Ratings' country risk assessments as of April 1, 2022. We currently review 141 assessments using the criteria in "Country Risk Assessment Methodology And Assumptions," published Nov. 19, 2013, on RatingsDirect (see table 1 in the Appendix).

Latest Country Risk Actions

Since we last published this report on March 7, 2022, we have:

  • Assigned Armenia a country risk assessment of '5' (high risk).

About Country Risk Assessments

We define "country risk" as the broad range of economic, institutional, financial market, and legal risks that arise from doing business with or in a specific country and can affect a nonsovereign entity's credit quality. The credit risk for every rated entity and transaction is influenced to varying degrees by these types of country-specific risks. The factors we evaluate are economic risk, institutional and governance effectiveness risk, financial system risk, and payment culture/rule of law risk (see chart 1).

Chart 1

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Chart 2

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Our country risk assessments rank country risk on a scale of '1' (very low risk) to '6' (very high risk). For corporate, infrastructure, and insurance entities, the country risk assessment combines with our industry risk and competitive position assessments to produce the business risk assessment (see "Insurers Rating Methodology," published July 1, 2019 and "Corporate Methodology," published Nov. 19, 2013, on RatingsDirect). Country risk is also considered in project finance transactions (see "Project Finance Construction Methodology," published Nov. 15, 2013, and "Project Finance Operations Methodology," published Sept. 16, 2014.

Our use of the country risk assessments in other sectors will be governed by the rating criteria for those sectors and for other asset classes. However, they do not affect our methodology for considering country risk for banks, found in "Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment Methodology And Assumptions," published Nov. 9, 2011.

Appendix: Latest Country Risk Scores

Table 1

Country Risk Assessments By Group And Country As Of April 1, 2022
--Ranging from Group '1' (lowest risk) to Group '6' (highest risk)--
Very low risk (1) Low risk (2) Intermediate risk (3) Moderately high risk (4) High risk (5) Very high risk (6)
Australia Austria Abu Dhabi Bahamas Albania Algeria
Canada Belgium Bermuda Botswana Armenia Angola
Denmark France Cayman Islands Brazil Azerbaijan Argentina
Finland Hong Kong Chile Bulgaria Bahrain Belarus
Germany Iceland Czech Republic China Bangladesh Belize
Luxembourg Ireland Estonia Colombia Barbados Burkina Faso
Netherlands Japan Israel Costa Rica Benin Congo (Republic of)
Norway New Zealand Latvia Croatia Bolivia Congo (Democratic Republic of)
Singapore South Korea Lithuania Curacao Bosnia and Herzegovina Ecuador
Sweden U.K. Macau Cyprus Cambodia Eritrea
Switzerland Malaysia Dubai Cote d'Ivoire Ethiopia
U.S. Malta Greece Dominican Republic Gabon
Portugal Hungary Egypt Iraq
Qatar India El Salvador Lebanon
Slovakia Indonesia Georgia Madagascar
Slovenia Italy Ghana Mauritania
Spain Kuwait Grenada Mozambique
Taiwan Mauritius Guatemala Nicaragua
United Arab Emirates Mexico Honduras Nigeria
Morocco Jamaica Pakistan
Oman Jordan Papua New Guinea
Panama Kazakhstan Russia
Peru Kenya Suriname
Philippines Macedonia Tanzania
Poland Maldives Togo
Ras Al Khaimah Marshall Islands Ukraine
Romania Moldova Zambia
Saudi Arabia Mongolia Zimbabwe
Serbia Paraguay
Sharjah Rwanda
South Africa Senegal
Thailand Sri Lanka
Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia
Turks and Caicos Turkey
Uruguay Uganda
Uzbekistan
Vietnam

Table 2

Regional Risk Assessments As Of April 1, 2022*
Region Weighted-average country risk
Europe, the Middle East, and Africa
Western Europe 1
Southern Europe 4
Western and Southern Europe 2
Eastern Europe 4
Central Europe 4
Eastern Europe and Central Asia 6
Africa 5
Middle East 4
The Americas
North America 1
Latin America 4
Central America 5
The Caribbean 5
Asia-Pacific
Asia-Pacific 4
Central Asia 4
East Asia 3
Australia and New Zealand 1
*See Section C of the "Corporate Methodology" criteria article for further details on how regional scores are derived.

Related Criteria And Research

For a fuller understanding of our country risk assessment criteria and other relevant publications, please see the following articles published on RatingsDirect.

Related Criteria
Corporate and financial services ratings
Structured finance ratings
Sovereign and public finance ratings
Related Research
Primary Credit Analysts:Timucin Engin, Dubai + 971 4 372 7152;
timucin.engin@spglobal.com
Mario Chakar, London + 44 20 7176 7070;
mario.chakar@spglobal.com
Secondary Contacts:Andreas Kindahl, Stockholm + 46 84 40 5907;
andreas.kindahl@spglobal.com
Pablo F Lutereau, Madrid + 34 (914) 233204;
pablo.lutereau@spglobal.com
Emmanuel F Volland, Paris + 33 14 420 6696;
emmanuel.volland@spglobal.com
Ravi Bhatia, London + 44 20 7176 7113;
ravi.bhatia@spglobal.com
Andrew Wood, Singapore + 65 6239 6315;
andrew.wood@spglobal.com
Ali Karakuyu, London + 44 20 7176 7301;
ali.karakuyu@spglobal.com
Candela Macchi, Buenos Aires + 54 11 4891 2110;
candela.macchi@spglobal.com

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