LONDON — Moody’s Investors Service has announced Tuesday its intention to offer National Scale Ratings (NSR) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Moody’s NSRs are ordinal rankings of creditworthiness relative to other credits within a given country, which offer enhanced credit differentiation among local credits.

NSRs are generated from Global Scale Ratings (GSRs) through correspondences, or maps, specific to each country. However, unlike GSRs, Moody’s NSRs are not intended to rank credits across multiple countries.

Instead, they provide a measure of relative creditworthiness within a single country and typically permit the use of the full range of Moody’s 21 rating categories.

“National Scale Ratings are intended to provide greater differentiation among local credits within Saudi Arabia than is available on the global scale,” said Monica Merli, Moody’s Managing Director - Regional Head EMEA.

“Like our Global Scale Ratings, NSRs are based on our independent, transparent and forwarding-looking methodologies, complemented by our analytical resources.”

Moody’s National Scale Ratings are given a two-letter suffix to distinguish them from the agency’s GSRs.

NSRs in Saudi Arabia will have the country abbreviation “sa”. In Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign rating is currently A1 on the global scale, domestic issuers with GSRs at or above this level can potentially achieve NSRs of Aaa.sa. — SG