Debt In Emerging Markets At All Time Highs by Uday Tharar, GMO Emerging Markets Team – via Harvest
Have collected data and calculated debt levels of major emerging market economies. Calculating corporate debt is slightly tricky as there is no standard reporting for that. So the numbers might not exactly match what you see in news articles or media. Have made sure the methodology is same across all countries so that one can compare relatively.
In the charts below you will be able to see the total country debt broken up into external and domestic debt. One can avoid investing in countries within EM with high external debt during times of large currency depreciation.
Also total debt is broken up into household, government and corporate debt. Countries like Korea, Thailand and Taiwan have very high household debt where one can avoid auto, housing and consumer durable stocks. China on the other hand has very high corporate debt compared to peers in EM.
