Azerbaijan, Baku, May 14 / Trend A.Akhundov /
Standard & Poor's Ratings Services has revised its Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment (BICRA) on Azerbaijan (BBB-/Stable/A-3) to group '8' from group '9', the Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said on Monday.
"The economic risk score was revised to '7' from '8' and the industry risk score to '8' from '9'," the statement said.
The BICRA summarizes view of Standard & Poor's of the risks that a bank operating in a particular country and banking industry faces relative to those in other banking industries. A BICRA is scored on a scale from 1 to 10, ranging from the lowest-risk banking systems (group 1) to the highest-risk (group 10). Other countries in BICRA group '8' include Argentina, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, and Georgia.
"Our revised economic risk score for Azerbaijan is '7'. We have revised our assessment of economic imbalances to "low risk" from "intermediate risk"," the statement said.
The agency estimate that the oil and gas sectors directly contributed 40 percent of GDP in 2011, and another 35 percent indirectly through ancillary industries and services.