Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla took aim at Wall Street credit rating agencies on Tuesday, voicing disagreement with recent downgrades in the island government’s debt.
Moody’s Investors Services kicked off the downgrades before García Padilla took office, lowering Puerto Rico’s general obligation bonds to just one notch above “junk” level. Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings followed suit last month. All three peg the outlook as negative.
“I disagree with them and feel they are making unfair decisions over Puerto Rico,” García Padilla said in Guánica, where he inked two executive orders to help the agriculture industry.
“If they want to govern Puerto Rico, the elections are in 2016. Let them start a political party or join the one that was going to do what they wanted,” the governor added.
That was an apparent reference to former Gov. Luis Fortuño, who had won the trust of Wall Street for his belt-tightening and tax policies before losing his re-election bid to García Padilla.
García Padilla’s comments come as top Puerto Rico fiscal officials, including Government Development Bank President Javier and Treasury Secretary Melba Acosta, are reaching out to the credit raters and investors as they work to head off further downgrades that would effectively shut Puerto Rico out of the $3.7 trillion U.S. municipal bond market.
Moody’s, S&P and Fitch have also welcomed the García Padilla administration’s aggressive proposal to save Puerto Rico’s crumbling pension system. Still, each of the ratings agencies has voiced concerns about budget shortfalls and the lack of options to close them with a still stagnant island economy.
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