S&P Glob­al Rat­ings re­vised the out­look of three com­pa­nies in which the State has an own­er­ship stake—Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, First Cit­i­zens Group and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC)—from sta­ble to neg­a­tive last Fri­day, the day af­ter the in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing agency low­ered the Gov­ern­ment’s out­look.

In its rat­ing re­port on the two banks, in which the State con­trols a ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­ing, S&P ex­plained that last Thurs­day, it re­vised the out­look on its BBB- long-term is­suer cred­it rat­ing on T&T from sta­ble to neg­a­tive “be­cause fis­cal and ex­ter­nal buffers have erod­ed grad­u­al­ly over many years, re­flect­ing the lim­it­ed ef­fec­tive­ness of long-stand­ing ef­forts to boost GDP growth and strength­en fis­cal man­age­ment.”

S&P said that “as a re­sult” on Fri­day it re­vised the out­look on the two do­mes­tic lenders from sta­ble to neg­a­tive, while af­firm­ing its long-term BBB- and short-term A-3 rat­ings on them.