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Country Risk Assessments Update: October 2024

This article presents S&P Global Ratings' country risk assessments as of Oct. 24, 2024. We currently maintain 143 assessments using the criteria in "Country Risk Assessment Methodology And Assumptions," published Nov. 19, 2013, on Ratings Direct (see table 1 in the Appendix).

Latest Country Risk Actions

Since we last published this report on Sept. 10, 2024, we have:

  • Revised our country risk assessment on the Dominican Republic to '4' (moderately high risk) from '5' (high risk). This reflects our view of the country's improving rule of law and its efforts in fighting corruption over the past years.
  • Revised our regional risk assessment on the Caribbean to '4' (moderately high risk) from '5' (high risk) as a result of the above change on the Dominican Republic.

We do not expect any rating action as a result of these changes.

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 non-sovereign 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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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 Jan. 7, 2024, on Ratings Direct). Country risk is also considered in project finance transactions (see "General Project Finance Rating Methodology," published Dec. 14, 2022).

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 Dec. 9, 2021.

Appendix: Latest Country Risk Scores

Table 1

Country risk assessments by group and country as of Oct. 24, 2024
--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 Bolivia
Netherlands Japan Israel Costa Rica Benin Burkina Faso
Norway New Zealand Italy Croatia Bosnia and Herzegovina Congo (Republic of)
Singapore South Korea Latvia Curacao Cambodia Congo (Democratic Republic of)
Sweden U.K. Lithuania Cyprus Cote d'Ivoire Ecuador
Switzerland Macau Dominican Republic Egypt El Salvador
U.S. Malaysia Dubai Ghana Eritrea
Malta Georgia Grenada Ethiopia
Portugal Greece Guatemala Gabon
Qatar Hungary Honduras Gambia (The)
Slovakia India Jamaica Iraq
Slovenia Indonesia Kazakhstan Lebanon
Spain Jordan Kenya Madagascar
Taiwan Kuwait Maldives Mauritania
United Arab Emirates Mauritius Marshall Islands Mozambique
Uruguay Mexico Moldova Nigeria
Morocco Mongolia Pakistan
Oman Nicaragua Papua New Guinea
Panama North Macedonia Russia
Peru Paraguay Sierra Leone
Philippines Rwanda Sri Lanka
Poland Senegal Suriname
Ras Al Khaimah Tunisia Tanzania
Romania Turkiye Togo
Saudi Arabia Uganda Ukraine
Serbia Uzbekistan Zambia
Sharjah Vietnam Zimbabwe
South Africa
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Turks and Caicos

Table 2

Regional risk assessments as of Oct. 24, 2024*
Region Weighted-average country risk
Europe, the Middle East, and Africa
Western Europe 1
Southern Europe 3
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 4
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 Ratings Direct.

Related Criteria

Corporate, infrastructure, and financial services ratings
Structured finance ratings
Sovereign and public finance ratings
General criteria

Related Research

This report does not constitute a rating action.

Primary Credit Analyst:Mario Chakar, Dubai +971-4-372-7195;
mario.chakar@spglobal.com
Secondary Contact:Pablo F Lutereau, Madrid + 34 (914) 233204;
pablo.lutereau@spglobal.com

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