Downside risk to WA surplus goal: Moody's

Western Australia's credit ratings remain unchanged for now, with Moody's saying the financial deterioration projected in the latest budget is credit negative, but manageable.

After WA's new Labor government revealed a plan to return to surplus by 2021, largely underpinned by a greater share of GST revenue, the ratings agency said there was downside risk to the scale of growth assumptions so it viewed the target as "challenged".

S&P Global Ratings analyst Craig Michaels said further revenue write-downs in the budget had added downward pressure to the state's credit rating, which is on negative outlook.

"The government's new savings policies should go some way to mitigating this downward revenue pressure though," Mr Michaels said.