from Bloomberg:
For all the criticism of the U.S. currency by leaders of the so-called BRIC nations, dollar bonds sold by the largest emerging-market countries are outperforming debt traded in reais, rubles and yuan.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for a “more diversified” monetary system yesterday to reduce dependency on the world’s reserve currency. The four leaders met in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, where they planned to discuss buying each other’s bonds and foreign exchange, said Arkady Dvorkovich, Medvedev’s top economic adviser.
“It’s not up to politicians to determine which currency will be the world reserve currency,” said Lutz Karpowitz, a currency strategist at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “In the end the market decides it.”
Dollar bonds sold by China earned 11.4 percent in the past year, more than double the 4.6 percent for debt in yuan, JPMorgan Chase & Co. indexes show. Brazil’s U.S. currency bonds returned 3.6 percent as real-based notes lost 4.9 percent, and Russia’s dollar bonds outperformed with a 1.9 percent loss compared with a 7 percent drop in ruble debt. India doesn’t have dollar-denominated debt.
‘Illiquid Market’
Bonds sold in dollars have beaten domestic debt in part because Russia and China manage the ruble and yuan. Those denominated in the U.S. currency can trade more freely, giving fund managers confidence they can sell the securities and get their money when they need it.
The result is limited foreign investment in local-currency bond markets, said Ward Brown, who manages $5 billion of emerging-market debt at Massachusetts Financial Services in Boston. Only Brazil’s real is free-floating. India imposes capital controls to protect the rupee.
China and India are “highly restrictive on the local debt side” and Russia has “quite an illiquid market” for foreign investors, said Cristina Panait, an emerging-market strategist at Los Angeles-based Payden & Rygel, which manages more than $50 billion. “Currency performance is a big portion of returns.”
The real rallied 11.2 percent last month, the ruble gained 6.9 percent and the rupee rose 6.4 percent against the dollar. The yuan appreciated 21 percent between July 2005, when the government allowed it to trade more freely, and July 2008. China has prevented the currency from strengthening since then as the economy slowed.
The Chinese government today sold 28.27 billion yuan ($4.13 billion) of yuan-denominated bonds maturing in 2019.
IMF Bonds
Political and financial leaders in the BRIC countries say they want to take a larger role in the world financial system as their foreign reserves swell and the U.S. economy endures its worst crisis since the 1930s. The Dollar Index, which measures the U.S. currency against those of six trading partners, has dropped 9.4 percent from a three-year high in March.
The BRICs account for 15 percent of the world economy and hold $2.8 trillion in foreign-currency reserves, or about 42 percent of the total, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Last week, Russia and Brazil announced plans to buy $20 billion of bonds from the International Monetary Fund, after China said it was considering purchasing $50 billion of the securities. The purchases would both support the IMF, established to help nations rebuild from the ruins of World War II, and diversify some of their holdings.
Too Early
The BRIC leaders, among the biggest holders of U.S. assets, alternate between critiques of the dollar and support. Premier Wen Jiabao called in March for the U.S. “to guarantee the safety of China’s assets” and central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan the same month proposed a new global currency to reduce reliance on the dollar.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on June 2 Chinese leaders hadn’t expressed concern about the safety of U.S. debt during meetings in Beijing and said they “expect the dollar to be the principal reserve currency for a long period of time.”
Medvedev said earlier this month that the dollar wasn’t in a “spectacular position.” On June 13, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin reassured investors of the country’s confidence in the greenback by saying it was “still early to speak of other reserve currencies.”
Treasury Holdings
In May, China and Brazil began studying a proposal to move away from the dollar to settle trade and use yuan and reais instead. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said on June 10 the government’s decision to switch reserves into IMF bonds wasn’t aimed at weakening the dollar.
China and Russia agreed to use each other’s currencies more in bilateral trade to lessen dependence on the dollar, Medvedev told reporters in the Kremlin today after talks with Hu.
The leaders of the BRIC nations didn’t discuss the possibility of buying each other’s bonds during the summit in Yekaterinburg yesterday, Brazil’s Lula told reporters today in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.
China trimmed its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by $4.4 billion to $763.5 billion in April, Russia’s slipped by $1.4 billion to $137 billion and Brazil’s by $600 million to $126 billion. In May, the BRIC nations spent more than $60 billion buying foreign currencies, mainly dollars, to stop their currencies from gaining, according to central bank data and strategist estimates.
While the ballooning budget deficit is keeping the U.S. reliant on foreign financing, the world’s biggest economy is almost double the size of Brazil, Russia, India and China combined, based on 2008 figures compiled by Bloomberg. America’s market sustains the world’s biggest developing nations, with China increasing sales to the U.S. to $337.7 billion last year from $321.4 billion in 2007.
‘Political Gesture’
The dollar accounted for 64 percent of central bank reserves worldwide at year-end, up from 62.8 percent in June 2008, according to the IMF. The currency has underpinned exchange rates since the 1971 collapse of the Bretton Woods system, which linked their value to gold.
Statements about changing the global foreign exchange system are “just a political gesture,” said Pablo Cisilino, who manages $10 billion in emerging-market debt at Stone Harbor Investment Partners in New York. “At the end of the day, there is only one reserve currency on the planet.”
