Updated
Frontier Markets Like Morocco Show Higher Growth Rates
A new report by research firm Aite highlights Morocco as a top frontier market. As Banking Technology reports:
Frontier markets are countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Argentina, Colombia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran and Kazakhstan. As a group, they show higher growth rates than developed or emerging markets. In its report, Emerging World: exploring the new frontier, Aite notes that these markets are becoming increasingly attractive to investors, particularly since the conventional emerging markets like Brazil have seen lower growth rates since the financial crisis.
The factors driving growth include solid macroeconomic fundamentals and growth prospects, market outperformance, reasonable valuations, low volatility and low correlations to developed and emerging markets. Investors are also attracted by the opportunity to diversify their portfolio, which allows them to get the maximum level of risk versus return and protects against the risk of sudden, severe losses.
The biggest frontier markets by market capitalisation are Kuwait ($120 billion), Nigeria ($80 billion) and Morocco ($60 billion), followed by Argentina and Bangladesh, according to figures provided by the World Federation of Exchanges…. [Full Story]