In a comment on D&B's International Risk and Payment Review, posted on its web site, the Finance Ministry said that D&B is an international credit rating agency specialising in the assessment of trans-border business risks, with emphasis on risks in the collection of export claims, and investment profit repatriation.

"D&B is not a relevant or reference credit rating agency for assessing the risk of investment in government securities and/or loans, which is what the credit rating agencies Standard&Poor's, Moody's, Fitch Ratings and R&I specialise in," the ministry said in the statement.

In its International Risk And Payment Review, which brings risk indicators for 132 countries, D&B maintained the country risk indicator for Croatia at DB3d, but changed the ratings trend to "deteriorating", ranking Croatia at the bottom of the countries where the risk of doing business is slight.

"Croatia's risk outlook is clouded by policy uncertainty (as a result of growing public opposition to the government) and increasing political instability," D&B said.

Dismissing the agency's arguments as "superficial and unfounded", the Finance Ministry said D&B's overall assessment was based on four risk categories - political risks (internal and foreign security, political consistency), commercial risks (legislative transparency, court efficiency), macroeconomic risks (inflation, fiscal deficit, monetary aggregates), and external risks (trade balance, foreign reserves, foreign debt).

"In the political risk category, a government's popularity or the lack thereof, even if the assessment were true, is not a relevant indicator of related risks, that indicator is the consistency of government policies, which in the political segment is reflected in the progress Croatia has achieved in completing its EU membership talks and in improved regional foreign policy relations," the Ministry said.