On Dec. 8, 2016, we lowered our long-term credit rating on El Salvador to 'B-' from 'B' and affirmed our 'B' short-term rating. We also removed ratings from CreditWatch with negative implications and assigned a negative outlook to reflect our concerns over fiscal sustainability and low economic growth for 2017-2019. We revised our Banking Industry Risk Assessment (BICRA) on El Salvador to group '8' from group '7'. We also revised the anchor for banks operating only in El Salvador to 'bb-' from 'bb' due to a higher economic risk in the country. We revised our economic risk score to '9' from '8'. We consider that sagging economic growth --given the country's vulnerability to fiscal and external conditions--will pressure the economic
