Moody's Investors Service has today changed the outlook on 10 South African regional and local governments' (RLGs) and two government-related entities' (GRIs) ratings to negative from stable. Moody's has affirmed the ratings of all the affected issuers. A list of the affected ratings is at the end of this press release.

Fitch Ratings has affirmed the City of Johannesburg's (CoJ) Long-term local currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'BBB'. The agency has upgraded the National Long-term rating and the national senior unsecured ratings on outstanding bonds to 'AA'(zaf) from 'AA-(zaf)', and affirmed the National Short-term rating at 'F1+(zaf)'. The Outlooks are Stable. The 'AA+(zaf)' rating on the ZAR333m COJ02 partially guaranteed bond (final maturity in September 2016) has also been affirmed.

On Dec. 4, 2015, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services revised the outlook on the Republic of South Africa to negative from stable. We affirmed the long- and short-term foreign currency sovereign credit ratings on the Republic of South Africa at 'BBB-/A-3'. We also affirmed the 'BBB+/A-2' long- and short-term local currency ratings.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded South Africa's Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Rating to 'BBB-' from 'BBB' and to 'BBB' from 'BBB+', respectively. The Outlooks are Stable. The issue ratings on South Africa's senior unsecured foreign and local currency bonds have also been downgraded to 'BBB-' from 'BBB' and 'BBB' from 'BBB+', respectively.