Many smaller emerging markets are confronting a “silent debt crisis” as they struggle with the impact of high US interest rates on their already-fragile finances, the World Bank has warned.
After a sharp sell-off last year triggered by a rapid rise in global interest rates and a strong dollar, foreign currency emerging market debt has struggled to recover as investors bet that borrowing costs will have to stay higher for longer.
That has left the proportion of emerging and developing countries whose borrowing costs are more than 10 percentage points above those of the US at 23 per cent. That compares with less than 5 per cent in 2019, the World Bank calculates, in an indication of the stress those economies are now under.