Szałamacha: the złoty has slightly depreciated, but it will even out

The Minister of Finance Paweł Szałamacha reacted to the  downgrading of Standard & Poor's rating of Poland by admitting that the value of the złoty had fallen slightly in the wake of the news, but that by Monday afternoon its course should even out. The ratings agency cut Poland's foreign credit rating from A- to BBB+ on Friday as a reaction to "political intereference in key legal and economic institutions" which have weakened "the checks and balances in the economy". The złoty already fell in value on Friday: The EUR/PLN exchange rate increased from 4.40 to 4.49,  and remained volatile this morning, according to research from Danske Bank. Szałamacha, appearing on TVN24 Monday morning, expressed his disagreement with S&P, noting that ratings agencies are meant to analyze the financial and economic reliability of a country,  which include things such as debt service and whether investors have guarantees on the payments on their bonds. He pointed to the fact that other rating agencies did not change their scores for Poland, and that the World Bank even increased its growth projection for the Polish economy for 2016 as evidence that S&P's decision was "a deviation from the consensus." "In this case the agency widened its field of interest and began to analyze Polish politics. [...] This was a completely abnormal decision."