French credit firm low-balls Turkey's rating

Turkey is still as risky to investors as Egypt and Libya, both recently rocked by massive internal turmoil, claims the Euler Hermes Group, a French credit insurance company that has recently started to use its independent name in Turkey. Tunisia, Morocco, Bahrain and Oman, other countries in the region facing political turmoil, are less risky than Turkey, according to the group's current ratings, which have been kept unchanged since last month. Turkey must take steps forward including increasing the transparency of enterprises and challenging the current account deficit, Hermes executives told reporters yesterday at a meeting in Istanbul. Hermes announced it would continue its Turkey operations under the name Euler Hermes after a five-year period when it acted under the Allianz brand. "There are emotional effects of the county ratings," Wilfried Verstraete, the group's CEO, said after the meeting. On the Hermes scale, Turkey ranks a C, which signifies "high external transfer and convertibility risk and well-below-average business environment."