Moody’s Investors Service said on Friday it had upgraded Bulgaria’s sovereign debt rating, praising fiscal discipline in the volatile regional environment.

Moody’s said in a statement it upgraded Bulgaria’s rating to Baa2 from Baa3 in the light of the government’s “effective fiscal consolidation supplemented by recent structural reforms, which are expected to maintain Bulgaria’s very low debt burden.”

Other factors included the central bank’s “very effective” management of the country’s currency board regime that ties the lev to the euro at a fixed rate and the finance ministry’s “tighter procedures for expenditure control,” the statement said.

The credit rating agency said it could upgrade the rating even further when Bulgaria enters the ERM II two-year waiting room to join the eurozone, which had been a top priority of the current right-wing government when it took office two years ago.

On Thursday, however, Finance Minister Simeon Djankov said in a television interview that Bulgaria would postpone the start of preliminary talks on joining ERM II (exchange rate mechanism for non-eurozone EU countries) until it got a “clearer” picture of the current debt crises in several EU member states.