On April 11, 2017, we lowered our long-term foreign and local currency ratings on El Salvador to 'CCC-' from 'B-' given that Congress recently failed to approve a budgetary allocation that was needed to cover payment of financial commitments for pension related debt. We also lowered our short-term rating to 'C' from 'B.' We placed the ratings on CreditWatch with negative implications given that we could further lower them to 'SD' (selective default) if political stalemate continues to block the approvals for budget allocation during the following week and, therefore, the government remains unable to fund these missed payments. We affirmed our Banking Industry Risk Assessment (BICRA) on El Salvador at group '8' despite revising our industry risk score to
