International borrowing fell sharply in the last quarter of last year, with residents in countries with sluggish growth in particular cutting back on borrowing, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said on Sunday.
Borrowing fell 10 percent from the third quarter to US$1.778 trillion, while repayments were up 4 percent.
“Regional issuance patterns to some extent reflected the uneven nature of the economic recovery,” the BIS said.
“Residents in emerging markets raised 19 percent more funds in the international market than in the third quarter, whereas borrowers from developed economies reduced their issuance by 38 percent,” it said.
Borrowing by countries in the eurozone halved to just US$111 billion.
In Britain, borrowers actually “reduced their debt outstanding in the international market, with net redemptions amounting to US$26 billion,” the bank said.
In countries such as Australia and Canada, meanwhile, where recovery had taken a firmer hold, borrowing was up.
The picture was, however, more variable across emerging countries.
While borrowing increased in Latin America to levels unseen since the 1990s, residents in rapidly expanding Asia and the Pacific borrowed half of the amount they did in the third quarter.
And in the Middle East, which had been hit by Dubai’s default, financial institutions in the United Arab Emirates repaid a net US$5 billion.
Dubai shook global stock markets in November when it called for a debt moratorium for troubled state-owned conglomerate Dubai World.
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