The National Bank of Serbia has chosen the scoring of the Business Registers Agency (APR) for the reference creditworthiness assessment that it will use when performing monetary operations in the trade of corporate securities, the APR announced.
Scoring as a credit rating provided by APR has been present on the domestic market since 2007, and starting from May 5, 2020, the third version of that rating is available to users, determined by a model that is adapted to modern business conditions.
Companies can get a scoring in which the credit rating is expressed in five basic and three specific levels, such as: excellent credit rating (AA), very good credit rating (BB +, BB, BB-), good credit rating (CC +, CC, CC-), acceptable creditworthiness (DD +, DD, DD-) and very weak creditworthiness (EE).
For companies over which a legal procedure has been initiated (bankruptcy, liquidation or status change), then which are illiquid for a longer period of time, newly established companies or for which there is no or insufficient data, the credit rating is not determined, and scoring is indicated by status marks.
As a reminder, the NBS recently expanded the list of securities that can be used in the monetary operations of the Central Bank, securities issued by companies with appropriate creditworthiness.
“Restrictions prescribed by the NBS regarding corporate bonds that it will accept in monetary operations, ie those issued by companies that, according to APR, have excellent creditworthiness and very good creditworthiness, show its commitment to invest in quality securities, whose are issuers of companies that have excellent or very good ability to settle liabilities, as a result of high profitability, financial stability and security, as well as flexibility in business.
In the statement, APR estimates that it “confirms the objectivity and credibility that this assessment has in the country’s financial market and shows the leading role that APR has as a service to the economy”, as well as “significant role that APR has as one of the participants in encouraging domestic development capital markets”.
According to the data from the financial reports for 2019, which have been submitted by about 74,000 companies so far, the scoring for the period from 2015 to 2019 has been determined, and 10,279 companies have excellent and very good creditworthiness.
“We remind you that, in accordance with the Decree issued by the Government of Serbia, the deadline for submitting regular annual financial reports for 2019 has been extended to August 4, 2020, and that for companies that have not yet submitted that report, until they submit, APR issues scoring for the period from 2014 to 2018. That scoring was determined for a total of 101,577 companies, of which 16,855 companies with excellent and very good creditworthiness,” it is added in the announcement, Nova Ekonomija reports.
