Have emerging markets managed their debt maturities better?
Right after the Asian financial crisis of 1997, maturities shortened because of risk aversion. But since then, as economies have moved beyond the damaging effects of crisis, we have been able to issue longer and longer maturities. In the Philippines, we continue to lengthen our average maturities, which for the public sector is more than 18 years on public debt and more than 10 years for private borrowing. This mitigates the risk of our high level of debt relative to our economy [about 54% at the end of 2002]. We have also made a conscious effort to avoid bunching of maturities in any one year. Q: What about Asian bond market initiatives? A: There are several coordinated efforts to create an Asian bond market. It exists but is not as well developed as we want it to be. For example, there are some non-Singaporean companies issuing in Singapore dollars, but things are still immature. That’s why there’s a big push by international governments and multilaterals to pursue measures to accele
