On May 5, 2017, we raised our long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on El Salvador to 'CC' from 'SD' (selective default) and our short-term ratings to 'C' from 'SD', after the government cured missed pension debt payments (Certificates for Pension Investments [CIPs]) after Congress approved a budget reallocation. As a result of the missed CIPs payments, the cost of external financing could rise, which undermines our assessment of the sovereign's external debt position. This, in turn, has elevated economic imbalances. In this sense, we revised our Banking Industry Risk Assessment (BICRA) on El Salvador to group '9' from '8' after revising our economic risk score to '10' from '9'. The latter revision reflects increasing economic imbalances, which
