Emerging Markets Are Going to Pay the Price Again
Just as after the Great Recession, the actions of developed-world central banks are likely to doom poorer nations to years of subpar growth and political instability.
Earnings in India aren’t expected to recover anytime soon.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg
Judging by the performance of emerging markets, you’d hardly know the world was suffering from a deadly pandemic. After a horrible March, according to the Institute for International Finance, non-resident portfolio flows into emerging markets increased tenfold to $32.9 billion in June. MSCI’s EM currency index hit a one-month high last Thursday. Even currencies as weak as the South African rand are seeing a bit of a rally.
Of course, that doesn’t mean things are going well in developing nations themselves. If anything, many of them face longer and more troublesome recoveries than was anticipated at the depth of the market panic in March. Earnings aren’t expected to recover anytime soon. Here in India, the ratio of price to one-year forward earnings for stocks in the Nifty50 index is the highest it has been for a decade.