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Middle East to lift EM sovereign debt sales

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LONDON: Sales of hard currency debt issued by developing nations should bounce back this year after a torrid 2018 for emerging markets (EM), driven by fresh supply from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, Morgan Stanley predicted.


Sovereign hard currency gross issuance is expected to rise to $158 billion in 2019 — a 15 per cent increase on 2018 — but will remain below the record $674 billion sold in 2017, Morgan Stanley strategist Simon Waever said in the bank’s EM sovereign credit outlook for 2019, published on Monday.


A grim combination of a strong dollar, Sino-US trade tensions, central banks turning off the money taps, cooling growth around the globe and crisis in Turkey and Argentina have battered emerging markets in the past twelve month.


While gross issuance recovered, this translated only into a $1 billion increase of net issuance year-on-year in 2019 due to emerging markets facing heavy redemptions, Morgan Stanley found, adding overall debt redemptions were rising to $2 trillion in 2019 from $1.4 trillion last year.


Among the issuers, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are likely to remain large issuers, wrote Waever, expected to sell over $10 billion each. Abu Dhabi and Kuwait could both come with large deals after a hiatus in 2018, though battered Argentina will stay out of the market after its 2018 bumper $9 billion deal. Uzbekistan and Benin meanwhile have both announced they wanted to sell inaugural hard currency bonds.


Among sovereign issuers, oil exporters’ share will grow again, predicted Morgan Stanley, accounting for just over half of 2019 issuance compared to around one third over 2013-2015. — Reuters



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