WARSAW: Polish Finance Minister Pawel Szalamacha on Saturday declared global ratings agency Standard and Poor’s “simply wrong” after it downgraded the country’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating citing concerns over government reforms.

Standard and Poor’s on Friday cut the rating by one notch to ‘BBB+’ over controversial institutional changes pushed through by the new right-wing administration that swept to power in Poland in October, including tighter government control over state media and changes to the constitutional court.

“In our view, these measures erode the strength of Poland’s institutions and go beyond what we had anticipated regarding policy changes from the general election,” S&P said.

The downgrade prompted a slide in the Polish currency, the zloty, to its lowest level against the dollar since 2003.

Szalamacha called on the agency to “reverse this erroneous decision”.

“The S&P agency has not taken economic aspects into account, but is concentrating on politics,” he told private TV channel TVN24.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2016