S&P Global Ratings has dismissed claims that its assessments disadvantage African governments, saying its approach applies uniformly across all regions, Bloomberg reported.

Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, the agency’s global head of sovereign ratings, said its criteria remain transparent and publicly available, countering repeated criticism raised during recent international forums.

Speaking during an S&P event held alongside the Group of Twenty summit in Johannesburg on Thursday, Sifon-Arevalo said the agency applies the same framework to every sovereign it evaluates. “We don’t treat Africa or Latin America or Asia — we don’t treat anybody different,” he said. “Our criteria, our methodology, has been public for decades now and anybody can look at it.”

Calls for greater scrutiny of ratings agencies resurfaced throughout the week, including at the Bloomberg Africa Business Summit, where several policymakers and executives argued that African sovereigns are systematically disadvantaged.

At S&P’s own conference, Standard Bank Group chief executive Sim Tshabalala reiterated those concerns, pointing to studies suggesting that African governments may be rated as many as four notches below what their macroeconomic indicators imply.

Sifon-Arevalo rejected the notion of structural bias, arguing that comparisons often rely on inappropriate benchmarks. “Sometimes when I speak with people looking at Africa specifically, their benchmark is Europe or the United States,” he said. “I rarely hear benchmarking themselves with Southeast Asia or Latin America.”

Debate over transparency in global ratings frameworks extended beyond the summit. South African Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago, speaking at a monetary policy committee announcement on the same day, said the proprietary nature of agencies’ forecasting models limits scrutiny. “The rating agencies tell us that their models are proprietary,” he said. “So it is difficult to take their models and interrogate them and say where is this thing going.”

Sifon-Arevalo countered that S&P’s methodology is openly published and can be replicated, though he acknowledged that subjective judgment remains part of the process.