Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
The World’s Poorest Countries Buckle Under $3.5 Trillion
in Debt (3/3)
Ezra Fieser and Yinka Ibukun
Tue, December 12, 2023 at 4:00 p.m. PST
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In the 1990s, economist Farida Khambata came up with the
idea of splitting off the poorest countries from the broader category of
emerging markets, which include wealthier nations such as India and Mexico.
Growing up in Mumbai in the 1960s, she’d witnessed steep inequalities,
sometimes even from one street to the next. After studying economics at the
University of Cambridge and doing graduate work at London Business School,
Khambata took a post at the World Bank.
At the bank’s International Finance Corp. (IFC), which
promotes private-sector investment in developing markets, Khambata maintained
the emerging-markets database. To describe the poorest ones, she landed on the
term “frontier.” “It was all gut,” she says. “These were countries that were on
the edge of becoming emerging markets but not quite there yet. They were on the
frontier.”
At the urging of IFC Managing Director David Gill, the bank
focused on attracting equity investments to these markets. After a wave of
defaults in the 1980s, the idea was that developing markets had borrowed enough
already. Equity comes with fewer strings attached—if the investment doesn’t
work out, stockholders aren’t owed anything. At first, Wall Street showed
little interest.
Khambata recalls pitching the idea of investing in a South
Korea-specific stock index and being told it was a charity case. In 1993, a
year after the term “frontier markets” was coined, the Korea index had posted a
29% return, according to Bloomberg data. In 2007, Standard & Poor’s
launched its Select Frontier Index, made up of 30 stocks of companies in
countries such as Pakistan, Panama and the United Arab Emirates. The idea: Give
investors access to fast-growing companies and returns that weren’t correlated
with other markets.
The early returns of the index reflected their markets’
volatility. It gained 18% in 2007 only to fall 62% the next year, Bloomberg
data show. Over the past 10 years, the index has averaged an almost 7% annual
return, compared with 12% for the S&P 500. Still, Deutsche Bank, Bank of
New York Mellon and BlackRock followed with indexes and exchange-traded funds
of their own.
By the 2010s, investors started showing enthusiasm for
frontier bonds, reflecting a thirst for higher-yielding securities. The
countries might have been poor, but they had low debt-to-GDP ratios, which are
a standard measure of a country’s fiscal health. Citigroup’s then-Chief
Executive Officer Vikram Pandit and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon both toured Africa
in 2010, talking up the opportunities on the continent. “Africa has a major
role to play in this new world,” Pandit told reporters in Johannesburg. Dimon said
he was “incredibly impressed” by the opportunities on the continent after
visiting South Africa with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an adviser
to the bank.
Later that year, Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga, then Nigeria’s
finance minister, led a multicity roadshow in Europe as well as New York to
drum up support for the nation’s $500 million eurobond. Buyers from Europe, the
US, Asia and Africa bid for part of the deal. By the time it was placed in
early 2011, bankers had received orders equaling more than twice the amount of
debt sold. The bond yielded 7%, about 3.5 percentage points more than similar
Treasuries at the time. “There was a lot of optimism at the time, and for good
reason: Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies were in Africa,” Aganga says.
Over the next decade, African countries borrowed heavily.
Debt rose 250%, to $645 billion, according to One, an antipoverty charity
founded by U2 singer Bono that’s pushed for relief from repayment. Frontier
countries are also in hock to China. The country loaned tens of billions of
dollars to African nations, often through bilateral deals or state banks, which
offered credit for infrastructure projects.
China is increasingly competing with multilateral lenders,
such as the International Monetary Fund, to provide bailouts to distressed
countries. As of the end of 2021, China had doled out 128 rescue loans worth
$240 billion, according to a study based on statistics from AidData, an
institute housed at William & Mary, a public research university in
Virginia. That type of lending from China was rare a decade earlier, the study
found.
Now, rising interest rates and inflation have exposed risks
across frontier markets. Bolivia’s notes have lost more than a third of their
value in 2023, while debt from Ecuador have also fallen by double digits. This
week, Ethiopia said it would miss an interest payment that was due on Monday
because of the nation’s “fragile external position.” Like its peers, the nation
had been effectively locked out of markets. In fact, no sub-Saharan African
country has issued a eurobond since April 2022, the IMF said in its October
outlook.
Some investors, seeing opportunity, are scouring the world
for countries where the market is overstating the risk of default. The value of
El Salvador’s bonds have more than doubled in 2023. “There is a clear
distinction between the ones that find access to markets easier and those that
find access to markets harder,” says Philip Fielding, a money manager at MacKay
Shields, a unit of New York Life Insurance Co.
These days, Aganga, the former finance minister, has a more
skeptical view of owing money to foreign countries. “The global financial
system is, Africans would say, biased toward the US,” he says. Aganga recalls,
wistfully, the days when Wall Street couldn’t get enough of poor countries’
debt. “Now everything is the reverse,” he says. “Inflation and interest rates
are high globally, and frontier markets, especially those in Africa, are
suffering.”
(Fieser covers emerging markets from New York. Ibukun is a
senior reporter based in Accra, Ghana)
Translation
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在1990年代，經濟學家 Farida Khambata 提出了將最貧窮國家與更廣泛的新興市場（包括印度和墨西哥等富裕國家）分開的想法。 她在 20 世紀 60 年代的孟買長大，目睹了嚴重的不平等，有時不平等可見於一街之隔。 Khambata 在劍橋大學學習經濟學, 並在倫敦商學院完成研究生工作,
之後在世界銀行任職。
該銀行的國際金融公司（IFC）負責促進私人企業對發展中市場的投資，Khambata 負責管理新興市場資料庫。 為了描述最貧窮的人，她用了「邊緣」這個詞。 她說: 「這全都是直覺」。 「這些國家正處於成為新興市場的邊陲，但尚未成為新興市場。 他們在邊緣」。
在國際金融公司董事總經理 David Gill 的敦促下，該銀行專注於吸引以購買股票方法到這些市場投資。 在 20 世紀 80 年代的一波違約浪潮之後，人們認為發展中市場已經借到了足夠的資金。 股權的附加條件較少, 即如果投資失敗，股東不欠下任何東西。 起初，華爾街並沒有表現出太多興趣。
Khambata 回憶說，她提出了投資韓國特定股票指數的想法，並被告知這是一個慈善案例。 根據彭博社的數據，1993 年，即「邊緣市場」一詞被創造一年後，韓國指數的回報率為 29%。
2007年，標準普爾推出了精選邊緣指數，由巴基斯坦、巴拿馬和阿拉伯聯合大公國等國家的30檔公司股票組成。 想法是：讓投資者能夠接觸到快速成長的公司,
並獲得與其他市場不相關連的回報。
該指數的早期回報反映了其市場的波動性。 彭博社的數據顯示，2007
年該股上漲了
18%，但第二年卻下跌了
62%。 過去10 年，該指數的平均年回報率接近7%，而標準普爾500
指數的年回報率為12%。不過，德意志銀行、紐約梅隆銀行和
BlackRock
也推出了自己的指數和交易基金。
到了 2010 年代，投資者開始對邊緣債券表現出熱情，反映出對高收益證券的渴望。 這些國家可能很窮，但它們的債務與國內生產毛額的比率較低，這是衡量一個國家財政健康狀況的標準指標。
2010 年，花旗集團時任執行長
Vikram Pandit 和摩根大通執行長 Jamie Dimon 都曾造訪非洲，談論非洲大陸的機會。Pandit 在約翰尼斯堡對記者說: 「非洲在這個新世界中可以發揮重要作用」。 Dimon 表示，在與摩根大通顧問、英國前首相 Tony Blair 一起訪問南非後，他對非洲大陸的機會有「深刻印象」。
同年晚些時候，時任尼日利亞財政部長 Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga 在歐洲和紐約主持了多場流動宣傳，為該國
5 億美元的歐元債券爭取支持。 來自歐洲、美國、亞洲和非洲的買家競購部分交易。 到 2011 年初就緒時，銀行家收到的訂單數量是已售出債務金額的兩倍以上。 該債券的殖利率為7%，比當時同類型公債高出約 3.5 個百分點。Aganga 說: 「當時人們很樂觀，而且有充分的理由：成長最快的 10 個經濟體中有
7 個在非洲」。
在接下來的十年裡，非洲國家大量舉債。 據
U2 歌手
Bono 創立的反貧困慈善機構 One 稱，債務增加了 250%，達到
6,450 億美元，該機構致力於推動還款減免。 邊緣國家向中國借貸。 中國通常透過雙邊協議或國家銀行向非洲國家提供數百億美元貸款，為基礎設施項目提供信貸。
中國正日益與國際貨幣基金組織等多邊貸款機構競爭，為陷入困境的國家提供紓困。 根據維吉尼亞州公立研究型大學
William
& Mary 學院下屬機構 AidData 的統計數據，截至
2021 年底，中國已發放了
128 筆救援貸款，價值 2,400 億美元。 研究發現，十年前來自中國的這類貸款很少見。
現在，利率上升和通貨膨脹暴露了邊緣市場的風險。 2023 年，玻利維亞的紙幣價值縮水了三分之一以上，而來自厄瓜多爾的債務也以兩位數下降。 本週，埃塞俄比亞表示，由於該國
“脆弱的外部狀況” ，該國將無法支付週一到期的利息。 與其他國家一樣，該國實際上被排除在市場之外。 國際貨幣基金組織在 10 月展望中表示，事實上，自 2022 年 4 月以來，撒哈拉以南非洲國家還沒有發行過歐元債券。
一些投資者看到了機會，正在全球尋找市場有被誇大違約風險的國家。 到 2023 年，薩爾瓦多債券的價值增加了一倍多。紐約人壽保險公司的子公司 MacKay Shields
的資金經理 Philip Fielding 表示: 「更容易進入市場的債券和更困難進入市場的債券之間存在明顯的區別」。
如今，前財政部長 Aganga 對欠外國錢財持更懷疑的態度。 他說: 「非洲人會說，全球金融體系偏向美國」。 Aganga 傷感地回憶華爾街瘋狂承受窮國債務的日子。
他說: 「現在一切都相反了」。 “全球通膨和利率很高，邊緣市場，尤其是非洲市場，正在承担痛苦損。”
So, 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 will have to repay about
$200 billion in bonds and other loans. The situation is especially grave
because these nations must turn to global lenders for cash to spend for
hospitals, roads, schools and other vital services. Rising interest rates and
inflation have exposed risks across frontier markets. I am wondering how true
is the view point that “The global financial system is biased toward the US.”
