Foreign central banks have never been more important as buyers of Western government debt. But as fears grow over the direction of major currencies and interest rates, markets will have to think twice about the drivers of official sector demand. Taimur Ahmad reports.
In November, Lee Chuan Teck, head of reserve management at Singapore’s central bank, urged official sector investors — particularly wealthy Asian central banks — to take advantage of a generalised flight to safety into Western government bonds by shifting foreign exchange reserves into riskier assets.
Latin borrowers are back riding the global liquidity wave and pricing ever-aggressive deals. In the near term, the fate of the region’s borrowers lies in the hands of G7 policy-makers. But in the long term, the crisis may have set off a bull market.
The country’s sovereign risk premium has jumped but Mexico is profiting from its historically clean debt profile and array of funding sources — for now
The global financial crisis has transformed emerging market sovereign risk premiums and debt management tactics. Countries need to tread carefully as they return to external debt markets to meet rocketing financing needs.
The food crisis is far from over for the poor in many developing economies. While prices may have fallen from their peaks, the factors which forced last year’s spike have hardly gone away.
Joachim Von Braun sets out a global policy agenda for tackling the scourge
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