New South Wales is Australia’s most populous state and home to Sydney, its most populous city.
Treasurer Daniel Mookhey cites his department’s analysis in the warning the state is looking at copping a rating downgrade. Within two weeks the state will be paying more than 5% of its income on servicing debt – a threshold that raises a red flag for the agencies. Treasury says NSW already exceeds the debt level of other typical AAA-rated states by 30%.
- “The state may already be in breach, or is in risk of breaching, almost every metric those agencies used to determine whether we remain one of the few sub-national governments anywhere in the world that has the same credit rating as countries like Germany”
Not an AUD positive at the margin.