Turkey learned least lessons from crisis

london — Turkey learned the fewest lessons from the Lehman crisis while Russia has done the most to protect itself from global turbulence, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s chief economist said on Thursday.

The development bank works in 36 countries across three continents and saw its markets hit hard by shockwaves from the global financial crisis seen a decade ago. Most are lower-income economies and are now facing strains again as the first real sustained rise in global interest rates since the crash takes hold. It also is proving a timely opportunity to take stock of what has changed.

“For the emerging markets, the main lesson is that you need to build deep and meaningful financial markets in your own country,” the EBRD’s chief economist Sergei Guriev told Reuters.

“Otherwise, because of problems in some other country, you may have an external financing shock and you will have a crisis.”

It echoes warnings from the likes of the Bank for International Settlements and IMF about countries stacking up too much dollar-denominated debt when the global rush to slash interest rates made it look ultra-cheap.

Now, however, the dollar is rising and countries are having to use more of their reserves to pay the money back. One such country is Turkey, which has seen its currency slump. “[Turkey has] a high level of dollar debt, a lack of independent decision making by the central bank, a lack of inflation targeting which results in wiping out euro-denominated financial markets, shorting the duration of lira financial instruments and reinforcing this burden of indebtedness,” Guriev said.

Emerging markets need to build deep financial markets in [their] own country Sergei Guriev, chief economist, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development