National debt levels – A cautionary tale

Emerging markets in 2020 are expected to see a contraction of 3%. That’s the first substantial contraction in this century for this group of economies. But, if we look within the emerging markets world, there are actually stark contrasts. For example, we still see that Asia is doing much better. It is only seen contracting by the IMF by -0.8%. And a lot of that is thanks to stimulus by China, which is still seen growing by 1% this year. Latin America, on the other hand, is seeing a big contraction, especially in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, with the latter two seeing contractions of around 10%.