These Charts Show the Astounding Growth in Emerging Market Corporate Bonds

While the size of the U.S. corporate bond market has jumped from $5.9 trillion in 2009 to $7.8 trillion at the end of last year, the debt sold by companies in emerging markets has been selling at an even faster clip.

A new primer from Barclays, which maintains several closely-watched bond indexes, notes that EM corporate debt "has grown more rapidly than virtually every other fixed income segment over this horizon." While still a small portion of the overall credit market, the amount of hard-currency EM corporate debt (such as bonds issues in dollars) outstanding is seven times larger than it was a decade ago. One of out of every five dollars of global corporate issuance now comes from an emerging market company.