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In Central and Eastern Europe the number of companies whose credit ratings dropped kept increasing in the past few years – says Zoltán Dercze, managing director of Coface Hungary. 45 percent of them were rated risky or of medium risk by Coface in 2007-2009. Things got even worse in 2009, for instance Poland’s 33.07 risk percentage in 2007 became 42.44 in 2009. Hungary managed to better its 2007 rating (from 54.46 percentage to 51,86), but it should be noted that in past years we were the only country where the proportion of risky companies stayed above 50 percent constantly. Our rating remains to be the worst in the region. The managing director of Coface envisions a gloomy future, with a higher number of problematic companies than creditworthy enterprises; western European trends are also expected to be negative, with the exception that proportions are 10-15 percent better there. According to Zoltán Dercze, poor performance in 2009 may result in ratings dropping further in 2010, consequently some companies may find it much more difficult to take out a loan – this phenomenon could block the development of our economy. He is of the opinion that the affiliates of multinational companies will be able to preserve their ratings, but SMEs may be shaken in both Hungary and Central and Eastern Europe.