The letter arrived on the first of April. It was not a joke.

The Continental Rating Agency, having dispatched senior assessor Cedric Haughton and junior assessor Adelaide Lark to Bobington for a five-day review in March — during which Lark’s questioning was described by Treasury officials as “relentless, in a quiet way” — has delivered its verdict on the proposed 350-million-florin, twenty-year tramway bond.

The rating is “Satisfactory, Conditional.”

In the peculiar vocabulary of municipal credit assessment, this is good news. It is not excellent news. It is the rating that says: we believe you can service this debt, provided you do three things we have specified in writing.

The three conditions are these.

First, a comprehensive geological survey of the Greymoor Highlands must be completed by 31 December 2026. This is the survey already mandated by the Copper Review Commission and funded at 1.65 million florins. Haughton and Lark, it appears, reached the same conclusion as Professor Whitstone: the city must know what lies beneath the ridge before it commits to building upon it. That the geological survey is already under way — Professor Nettleford’s assessment this week adds considerable urgency — makes this condition achievable, though the expanded scope now recommended may test the timeline.

Second, a copper hedging strategy must be formalised within sixty days. Prudence Holt of Greaves & Holt, engaged by the Treasury as external consultant, delivered her fourteen-page recommendation last week: forward contracts for approximately 60 per cent of Phase 1 copper — some 7,200 of the 12,000 tonnes required — at current prices. At 671 florins per tonne, the 32nd consecutive decline, this would lock in savings of approximately 63 million florins against the 740-florin baseline used in the prospectus. The Treasury is reviewing. The sixty-day clock, however, began on the first of April.

Third, Phase 2 of the tramway is contingent on copper remaining below 800 florins per tonne for six consecutive months. This is the agency’s way of saying what everyone already suspected: the second phase — from Caldecott Square interchange to Upper Fernwich — will only proceed if the commodity environment remains favourable. At 671, copper is well below the threshold. But commodity markets have shorter memories than rating agencies.

The practical consequence: the blank page in the bond prospectus — the page left empty for the rating, which Deputy Treasurer Whitford once described as “the most expensive page in the document” — is no longer blank. Three of the six financial institutions to whom the prospectus was circulated in March have submitted expressions of interest. The formal bond offering is expected in May.

The Eastern Spice Index closed yesterday at 223, its lowest level since before the Kaelmar crisis. Copper at 671 represents a decline of more than 24 per cent from its crisis peak of 889 in late February.

The conditions are achievable. The timeline is tight. The hedging decision, in particular, cannot wait — each week of copper decline represents an opportunity that Holt’s forward contracts are designed to capture.

The most expensive page in the document now has words on it. Whether those words are sufficient remains, as is the way of these things, conditional.