JOHANNESBURG: International bonds issued by smaller, riskier, emerging economies suffered another sharp selloff on Wednesday after President Donald Trump’s eye-watering 104pc tariffs on China took effect, re-igniting turmoil across global markets.

Pakistan’s longer-dated dollar-denominated bonds tumbled more than 6 cents to be bid below the 70-cent threshold where debt is seen as distressed, Tradeweb data showed.

Longer-dated bonds, issued by Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Egypt, were all down between 3.5-4.5 cents.

Debt in smaller emerging markets, known as frontier markets, has suffered sharp selloffs since Trump announced a raft of sweeping tariffs last Wednesday, with many bonds in the asset class losing 10 cents or more over the past week.

The latest rout is boosting the cost of borrowing for those economies sharply, with many of the bonds seeing their yields in the double digits, a threshold that makes it unpalatable for them to tap international capital markets.

“There are some conce­r­­ns in the market that Fron­tiers will find it more difficult in the future to raise external funding due to the external market developments and possibly persistent loss in risk appetite,” said Gergely Urmossy, of Societe Generale.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2025