Mali: New S&P report may give Serbia investment-grade credit rating

WASHINGTON - Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali said a new Standard & Poor's report on Serbia, due in October, may give the country investment-grade credit rating as early as this year.

Mali said this after a meeting with the credit rating agency's representatives in Washington, where he is attending the IMF/World Bank Group Spring Meetings.

"Usually I am not very optimistic but now, after this meeting, I am a bit more optimistic than I was before. We had a good and constructive meeting, difficult questions. We had a meeting with the S&P director for Europe, who inquired about our economy and, of course, our plans, as well as about regional problems, the Belgrade-Prisina relations, the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and everything that affects the credit rating," Mali told Tanjug.

He said attaining investment-grade rating would be like "putting icing on the cake after all the reforms and all activities undertaken in the past 12 years to make our economy strong, make it grow and make it stable," Mali said.