Apple Finance

ICRA has made a downward revision in the safety ratings of both short and long-term debt programmes of Apple Finance Corporation (AFC) and Apple Credit Corporation (ACL).

The medium-term debt programmes, including the non-convertible debenture (NCD) and the fixed deposit programme, have been downgraded from `MD' to `MA-'. The short-term commercial paper's (CP) rating has been lowered to `A5' from `A3', indicating default or likely to default. In a press release, ICRA said that the revised rating factors in the steep decline in the operating performance in the quarter-ended September 2000 caused by high provisioning for non-performing assets (NPAs) and write-off of bad debts.