Officials from the Ministry of Finance addressed journalists' questions on S&P's decision to maintain China's sovereign credit rating outlook as "stable".

Question: On June 27, S&P International Credit Rating Company released a report, maintaining China's sovereign credit rating of "A+", with a "stable" outlook, which is different from the judgement of Moody's and Fitch, what is the view of the Ministry of Finance on this?

Answer: S&P's decision to maintain a stable outlook for China's sovereign credit rating, after Moody's and Fitch downgraded their outlooks, is a recognition of Chinese economy's resilience and positive prospects, and reflects the independence and professionalism of S&P's rating team. Previously, the S&P rating team came to China for annual review, carried out in-depth and thorough exchanges with relevant departments of the Chinese government, think tanks and market institutions, and also conducted field research in some localities in China, which informed their objective assessment of China's sovereign credit status.

As S&P said, although China's economy is facing some difficulties and challenges, it will still maintain stable growth in the future as macro policies take effect. In our view, China has multiple advantages such as a large market, strong internal growth drive, solid foundation for development, accelerated development of new growth drivers, and amply supply of various factor of production, etc. Together with the Chinese government's continuous optimisation of macroeconomic adjustment policies and strengthening of counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments, the internal development impetus will be further enhanced, and the economic recovery will gather further momentum. Recently, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have upgraded China's economic growth expectations, which well confirms the above viewpoints.