“Just between 2000 and 2021, the share of public and publicly guaranteed external debt of low and lower-middle income countries (other than that held by IFIs) owed to bondholders jumped from 10 to 50 percent, while the share owed to China rose from 1 to 15 percent. Meanwhile, the share held by the 22 predominantly Western members of the Paris Club of official lenders fell from 55 to 18 per cent. Thus, co-ordinating creditors in a comprehensive debt restructuring operation has become far harder, because of their greater number and their diversity.“
The first comprehensive economic analysis measuring the impact of sanctions on economic activity in Russia.
The team relies on “using private Russian language and unconventional data sources including high frequency consumer data, cross-channel checks, releases from Russia’s international trade partners, and data mining of complex shipping data”.
Results are grim – “From our analysis, it becomes clear: business retreats and sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy.”
Africa continues to evade both acronym and imagination, attracting only cliches.
Yet, it is not like any other place on earth right now.
As this excellent piece from Adam Tooze makes clear, while Asia has taken back its place (see chart) in the historic world order, the same remains elusive for Africa.
This is despite what is a more than 10x of population since 1914 (124 million to 1.34 billion today) when compared to a “mere” 3-4.5x in Asia.
But Asia is plateauing in population terms. Africa continues to grow – forecast to reach 2.4-2.5 billion by 2050 and 35-40% of the world’s estimated 9-11 billion population by 2100.
How confident are we of the former forecast? As Tooze makes clear there is one “dramatic fact” – “a large number of the mothers whose children will drive growth to 2050 have already been born“.
Demographics are nebulous – long in time and space – but sometimes two decades, like the last two we experienced, are “decisive for global population history“.
There is so much more in the article culminating in a quote from Howard French – “How Africa’s population evolves, and how the continent’s economies develop, will affect everything people near and far assume about their lives today.”
China has over time displaced the weight of vulnerable economies in the Emerging Markets (EM) Index, the latter itself falling due to improving macroeconomic fundamentals.
* Vulnerable economies are defined as countries with poor external balances and reliant on foreign savings. Vulnerable countries are South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt, and Pakistan.
Sourced from GMO, read on for more reasons to own EM.
