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South Africa awaited a credit review from Moody’s on Friday which could see it lose its remaining investment grade standing with the three main rating agencies.
Sovereign credit ratings are an assessment of the risk a country carries, and affect the premium at which it can borrow money on local and foreign markets.
Fitch and S&P Global cut the country to “junk” status in 2017 amid concerns about its weak fiscal metrics and anaemic economic growth, but Moody’s still rates it at Baa3 with a stable outlook.
The best outcome would be for that to stay unchanged after Friday's review, which is expected after local financial markets close.
In the worst case scenario, Moody’s could join its peers in also downgrading South Africa to sub-investment grade, especially as economic growth is likely to take a further knock from rolling electricity blackouts which have hurt businesses as state utility Eskom struggles to meet demand.
Alternatively, Moody's could leave the credit rating unchanged and merely change the outlook to negative.
Some analysts believe the ratings agency could hold fire until South Africa holds its general election on May 8.
This would give President Cyril Ramaphosa, a former businessman generally favoured by investors, more political leeway to take the necessary tough measures to steer the economy onto a stronger growth path.
"Moody’s ... is quite clearly showing an excess of hope despite their framework being meaningfully shocked in October 2018 (with the medium term budget policy statement) and now after the budget (in February)," Peter Attard Montalto, head of capital markets research at Intellidex, wrote in a column published this week.
"As such we are unlikely to see any move in the rating level or outlook on Friday — indeed they may not release a report at all."
By rights, South Africa should have been downgraded a long time ago and has been cut a lot of slack by Moody's, Cannon Asset Managers founder and chief executive Adrian Saville said this week.
But speaking on radio station 702, Saville said the agency would probably give Ramaphosa a bit more wriggle room.
"The ratings agencies' task is not just to make a call on economic landscape. It has to take into account social, political, institutional factors also and throw all of that into the pot before they make an assessment," he said.
"Given that I would venture that they cut us arguable a last bit of remaining slack."