Developing countries mop up $333b from overseas markets

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NEW DELHI, June 11 (PTI): Raising funds from international markets has caught the fancy of companies in the developing countries, including India, as they mopped up around 333 billion dollars last year and the pace is likely to intensify in the near future, a recent World Bank study said.
"Private and state-owned corporations in developing countries have borrowed in international markets on an unprecedented scale in the past few years," the World Bank report, which analyses 'Globalisation of Corporate Finance in Developing Countries', said.
The sum of 333 billion dollars, a three-fold jump from 88 billion dollar in 2002, was raised mainly through syndicated bank loans and international bond issuance.
Twenty middle-income countries accounted for most of the participation in international capital markets, with India, China, Brazil, Mexico and Russia grabbing the lion's share.
"These countries account for 95 per cent of total bond issuance, 85 per cent of total bank borrowing and 95 per cent of total equity offerings by developing-country companies," the report said.
Interestingly, the fund raising was despite the fact that the access to international capital markets is more challenging for emerging-market corporate entities than for emerging-market sovereigns because of greater market constraints, the World Bank said.
The pace of corporate globalisation in the developing world is likely to intensify in the medium term, subject to fluctuations in the business cycle and cyclical changes in global financial conditions, it added.
This trend of financial corporations raising capital in global markets is more evident particularly in the case of commercial banks from India, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey, which have been at the forefront of what appears to be a major foreign credit boom.