Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
The World’s Poorest Countries Buckle Under $3.5 Trillion
in Debt (1/3)
Ezra Fieser and Yinka Ibukun
Tue, December 12, 2023 at 4:00 p.m. PST
(Bloomberg Markets) -- At Manhattan’s luxe Pierre hotel on a
late September morning, Adebayo Olawale Edun, the finance minister of Nigeria,
tried to soothe the jitters of Wall Street bankers. Over croissants and
fresh-squeezed orange juice, he pledged that his country would cut spending and
collect more in taxes to make the crushing debt payments owed to foreign investors.
For Edun, a former investment banker and World Bank economist, it could hardly
have been a more important audience: a presentation sponsored by Citigroup
Inc., one of the world’s biggest underwriters of international bonds.
Tucked inside the materials distributed to the crowd, one item suggested the challenge of his task, according to people who were there but requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The document showed that Nigeria’s 2022 debt payments, the equivalent of $7.5 billion, surpassed its revenue by $900 million. In other words, it had been borrowing more just to keep paying what it already owed.
A debt crisis is brewing across the developing world as a decade of borrowing catches up with the world’s poorest countries. In 2024 these nations, known to rich-world investors as “frontier markets,” will have to repay about $200 billion in bonds and other loans. The bonds issued by Bolivia, Ethiopia, Tunisia and a dozen other countries are either already in default or are trading at levels that suggest investors are bracing for them to miss payments.
The situation is especially grave, because these nations have small domestic markets and must turn to global lenders for cash to spend for hospitals, roads, schools and other vital services. As the Federal Reserve vows to keep US interest rates higher for longer, a once-ebullient market for debt from those countries is drying up, cutting them off from more borrowing and adding to the many rate-related risks of 2024. “The punch bowl has been taken away,” says Sonja Gibbs, a managing director of the Institute of International Finance, which represents private and central banks, investment managers, insurers and others in the industry. “Global rates are considerably higher, and the incentive to invest in these markets is challenging when you can get 4% or 5% in US Treasuries.”
A series of global shocks sparked the crisis. During the Covid-19 pandemic, rich nations printed money to hand out stimulus checks; poor ones had to borrow to keep their economies running. The easy-money policies in the wealthy world meant that investors were happy to lend in search of higher rates. Then, poor countries faced higher food import costs caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, combined with a global spike in inflation. The timing could hardly have been worse. Including government, corporate and household borrowing, the debt of the 42 countries the Institute of International Finance classifies as frontier markets reached $3.5 trillion in 2023, a record and about twice as much as a decade ago.
To stay solvent, many of these governments are slashing spending as debt payments consume their budgets. Already, some 3.3 billion people—about half of the world’s population—are living in countries that spend more on debt payments than on education and health care, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. In places such as Gabon, where President Ali Bongo Ondimba was unseated in a coup in August, tight budgets are leading to political upheaval.
“If this were the developed world, we’d already be calling it a debt crisis,” says Penelope Hawkins, a senior economist at the UN trade agency. “However many countries end up defaulting in the formal sense of the word is irrelevant: Right now, developing countries are diverting the resources that are needed for development to service their debt.” Investors in frontier nations’ debt and equity are bracing for pain. Some of the biggest holders are funds managed by BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and T. Rowe Price Group.
Unlike the US and other countries that issue debt in their own currency, frontier countries can’t ease their burden through inflation, by printing money. They often issue debt payable in another country’s currency through eurobonds. “This is the worst crisis in the last 30 years for these countries,” says Mattias Martinsson, partner and chief investment officer at Sweden’s Tundra Fonder AB, which manages equity funds dedicated to frontier markets. “These markets are not constructed in a way that can manage these eurobond issuances in cycles like these.”
(to be continued)
Translation
（彭博市場）— 9 月底的一個上午，在曼哈頓的豪華 Pierre 酒店，尼日利亞財政部長 Adebayo Olawale Edun 試圖安撫華爾街銀行家的緊張情緒。 他一邊吃著羊角麵包和鮮榨橙汁，一邊承諾，他的國家將削減開支並徵收更多稅收，以償還欠外國投資者的巨額債務。 對於作為前投資銀行家和世界銀行經濟學家 Edun 來說，這裡有最重要的聽眾：這是由花旗集團贊助的演講, 是世界上最大的國際債券承銷商之一。
據在場曾討論私人會議但要求匿名的人士透露，在分發給人群的材料中，有一項目提示了Edun的任務所面臨的挑戰。 文件顯示，尼日利亚2022年的債務償還額相當於75億美元，比其收入多出9億美元。 換句話說，它一直在借更多的錢，只是為了繼續償還已經欠下的錢。
隨着世界上最貧窮國家的十年借貸被追上來，一場債務危機正在整個開發中國家醞釀。 到 2024 年，這些被富裕世界投資者稱為「邊緣市場」的國家將不得不償還約 2,000 億美元的債券和其他貸款。 玻利維亞、埃塞俄比亞、突尼斯和其他十幾個國家發行的債券要么已經違約，要么交易水平表明投資者正在為發債國會錯過付款做好準備。
情況尤其嚴峻，因為這些國家的國內市場很小，必須向全球貸款機構尋求現金，用於醫院、道路、學校和其他重要服務。 隨著美聯儲誓言在更長時間內保持美國利率處於較高水平，這些國家一度熱鬧的債務市場正在枯竭，導致它們無法增加借貸，並增加了 2024 年許多與利率相關的風險。國際金融協會常務董事 Sonja Gibbs 表示, 派對果汁酒碗已被取走 ，該協會代表私人銀行和中央銀行、投資經理、保險公司和業內其他人士。 “全球利率要高得多，當你能獲得 4% 或 5% 的美國國債利率時，投資這些市場的吸引力就變得具挑戰性。”
一系列的全球性衝擊引發了危機。 在Covid-19大流行期間，富裕國家印鈔票來發放刺激支票； 窮人必須藉錢來維持經濟運作。 富裕國家的寬鬆貨幣政策意味著投資者樂於放款以尋求更高的利率。 隨後，俄羅斯和烏克蘭戰爭, 加上全通貨膨脹飆升, 導致貧窮國家面臨更高的糧食進口成本。 時機上再糟糕不過了。 包括政府、企業和家庭借款在內，國際金融研究所歸類為邊緣市場的 42 個國家的債務在 2023 年達到 3.5 兆美元，創歷史新高，約為十年前的兩倍。
許多政府為了維持償付能力都在削減支出，因為債務償還消耗了預算。 根據聯合國貿易和發展會議的數據，目前已有約 33 億人（約佔世界人口的一半）生活在償債支出高於在教育和醫療保健支出上的國家。 例如在 Gabon，總統 Ali Bongo Ondimba 在 8 月的政變中下台，緊縮的預算正在導致政治動盪。
聯合國貿易機構高級經濟學家 Penelope Hawkins 表示：「如果這是發達國家，我們早就將其稱為債務危機」。「然而，許多國家最終出現了正式意義上的違約是這無關緊要的：目前，發展中國家正在將發展所需的資源轉移到償還債務上」。投資在邊緣國家債務和股票的人正在準備好迎接痛苦。 一些最大持有者的基金是由 BlackRock、Franklin Templeton 和 T. Rowe Price Group 去管理。
與美國和其他以本國貨幣發行債務的國家不同，邊緣國家無法透過用印鈔以透過通貨膨脹來減輕負擔。 他們經常透過發行歐元債券並以他國貨幣支付債務。管理著專門針對邊緣市場的股票基金的瑞典Tundra Fonder AB 的合夥人兼首席投資官Mattias Martinsson表示: 「對這些國家來說，這是過去30 年來最嚴重的危機」; 「這些市場的建構方式是無法用這樣的周期形式去管理發行歐洲債券」。
（待續）
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