Finance Ministry secretary-general Mohd Irwan Siregar Abdullah has blamed the Fitch Ratings revision of Malaysia’s economic outlook to ‘negative’ by saying that the ratings agency was run by young analysts.

He had even jokingly said he regarded the case of Fitch Ratings as “ratings analysts from Hell”.

“Fitch (Ratings) are (run by) young guys, you know. They calculate based on their calculations and everything.

NONE “They don’t listen to the other part, whereas S&P (Standard and Poor’s) and Moody’s, the senior fellows... they know, they know the difficulties and so on,” said Mohd Irwan ( left ).

Mohd Irwan was answering a question posed by an attendee during a question-and-answer session at a briefing on the Economic Transformation Plan (ETP) at the Securities Commission today.

He added that despite an explanation given to Fitch representatives that more transformations would be done after the 2014 Budget announcement, the rating was still maintained.

“We met Moody’s and explained the same thing, and they decided to do a rating after the Budget,” he said.

“If you go to (read) blogs, there are many jokes about lawyers in Hell, so now we need to create new jokes for ratings analysts from Hell,” he quipped.

Fitch Ratings revised Malaysia's outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’, citing lack of progress in government reforms in addressing the budget deficit.

It also raised concerns over growing government debt, which stood at 53.3 percent at the end of 2012, not including contingent liabilities.