Bond investors, policy makers and the general public deserve transparent, objective and up-to-date government credit ratings. The issue of public debt is simply too important to be handled by traditional rating agency practices.

This is why we have launched the Public Sector Credit Framework (PSCF). The framework allows an analyst to set up and run a budget simulation model in an Excel workbook. The analyst also specifies a default point in terms of a fiscal ratio. The framework calculates annual default probabilities as the proportion of simulation trials that surpass the default point in a given year.