ABSTRACT
Rapid economic liberalisation in emerging markets, which gathered pace in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coupled with ongoing technological progress in transport and communications, has resulted in sharply increasing trade and financial integration of developing countries with global markets in recent years. The number of developing countries considered as ‘emerging’ markets (or significant investment targets for international investors) has increased from a handful in 1986 to 31 in 1998, covering virtually all the large developing countries, including China, India, Russia, Indonesia and Brazil. There has been a massive increase in international private capital flows to these countries (Table 1). Net long-term annual private flows increased from about US$43 billion in 1990 to a peak of about US$304 billion in 1997 (World Bank 2000). In the process, these flows have far surpassed net official flows of about US$30–60 billion annually.
