EU-DIGEST: Switzerland: Dutch economy is poised to improve -says Dutch Central Bank President Klaas Knot in Davos

1/30/14

Switzerland: Dutch economy is poised to improve -says Dutch Central Bank President Klaas Knot in Davos

The Netherlands recently kept its triple-A credit rating from Fitch, which said that the decision reflected the country’s strong underlying economic, institutional and credit fundamentals.

The rating agency kept the outlook at negative, however, because of the Netherlands’ weak economic growth prospects.

Another rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, stripped the Netherlands of its top-grade AAA rating in late November, also citing its low growth prospects.

So far that has left Germany, Luxembourg and Finland as the only members of the 17-nation euro zone with the coveted top rating from all three leading credit agencies.

Moody’s, which still rates the Netherlands triple-A with a negative outlook, will publish its next update on March 7th.

Note EU-Digest: The Dutch economy is poised to improve after house prices stopped declining and consumer confidence rose, Dutch Central Bank President Klaas Knot said.

“There is no need to think that the Dutch economy will structurally lag the euro zone any longer,” Knot, 46, who is also a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We will have to wait for mid-February to see whether the fourth-quarter gross domestic product numbers confirm the gradual recovery.” .

The Dutch economy, the fifth-largest in the euro area, emerged from a year of recession in the third quarter as exports benefited from a nascent recovery in the currency region. The country has gone through three recessions since the origins of the global financial crisis in 2007.