A Bloomberg survey showed analysts overwhelmingly expected South Africa’s creditworthiness to be downgraded to one level above junk status on Friday by Fitch Ratings agency.

It said 12 out 13 analysts it interviewed expected Fitch to hand the country a BBB- rating. The view is based in part on the fact that the cost of against a default by South Africa’s government for five years using credit-default swaps surpassed that of Turkey on October 23, two days after government widened its budget-deficit targets and riot police fought running battles with student protesters at Parliament.

The South African contracts are priced 13 basis points higher than those of Turkey, which is embroiled in the Syrian conflict and faces the threat of sanctions from Russia.

Turkey is rated sub-investment by Standard & Poor’s and the lowest investment grade by Fitch.

“Turkey’s election in November had quite a good outcome, while South Africa’s medium-term budget policy statement was actually quite negative,” Bloomberg quoted Ilke van Zyl, an economist at FirstRand’s Johannesburg-based investment-banking unit, as saying.

“A lot of the downgrade risk is already priced in and that could explain quite a lot of the so- called decoupling of the CDS’s,” Van Zyl added.

Some analysts also said Standard & Poor’s could lower its present rating of BBB- for South Africa to negative.

“There’s been some issues about the fiscal policies, there’s been some pressure from commodity prices and there has been bad economic figures, like the PMI that decreased, slow GDP figures and slow industrial figures,” Peter Skoettegaard Oeemig, a senior portfolio manager for emerging markets at Jyske Bank in Silkeborg, Denmark, was quoted as saying.

“That’s part of the reason why South Africa is starting to look a bit like something which can develop to be a new Brazilian case, where the government was not able to do the right reforms.”

South Africa’s currency weakened to a record 14.4930 against the dollar this week and the Reserve Bank warned the rand may weaken further when the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates for the first time since 2006.

The country narrowly avoided a recession in the third quarter, posting 0.7 percent annualised growth after a contraction in the previous three months. The Reserve Bank is forecasting GDP to expand 1.4 percent this year — the slowest growth since the country battled a recession in 2009.