On Nov. 17, 2011, the Republic of Hungary announced that it intends to seek a new agreement with the IMF and EU and expects such an agreement to be in place by early 2012. In order to assess the progress of negotiations and the likelihood that the agreement may materially affect policy predictability, we are maintaining our CreditWatch status on the ratings on Hungary (and the National Bank of Hungary). The CreditWatch will remain in place for longer than the one-month timeframe we envisaged when we initially placed the ratings on CreditWatch with negative implications on Nov. 11, 2011. The CreditWatch reflects our opinion that the predictability of Hungary's policy framework has lessened, affecting the economy's medium-term growth prospects. We
