Sovereign Credit Risk in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to assess and predict sovereign credit risk for Egypt, Morroco and Saudi Arabia using credit default swap (CDS) spreads obtained from the DataStream database for the period from 2009 to 2022. Our approach consists of generating the implied default probability and the corresponding credit rating in order to estimate the term structure of the implied default probability using the Nelson–Siegel model. In order to validate the prediction from the probability term structure, we calculate the transition matrices based on the implied rating using the homogeneous Markov model. The main results show that, overall, the probabilities of defaulting in the long term are higher than those in the short term, which implies that the future outlook is more pessimistic given the events that occurred during the study period. Egypt seems to be the country with the most fragile economy, especially after 2009, likely because of the political events that marked the country at that time. The economies of Morocco and Saudi Arabia are more resilient in terms of both default probability and credit rating. These findings can help policymakers develop targeted strategies to mitigate economic risks and enhance stability, and they provide investors with valuable insights for managing long-term investment risks in these countries.