GLOBALISATION AND THE GROWING DEBT BURDEN/69(quoted in Macias Cardone, 199 7, p. 8). But since I do not have this
kind of independent research for all the countries in question, I have
used OECD figures. Suffice it to say that they should be handled with
some caution, especially in the case of East and Southeast Asia,
whose countries' debt has increased significantly since the second
half of 1997. For example, in early January 1998, South Korea's
external debt was calculated to be somewhere in the vicinity of S160
and 200 billion.
Of the nine countries in Table 5.2, seven have more than 50 per
cent of their debt held by the financial markets.
A growing number of Third World countries issue debt paper, in
the main financial markets of the highly industrialised countries, in
their own domestic securities exchanges, and even through private
and public banks present on their soil. Most of these issues involve
debt instruments that have the advantage of being extremely liquid;
the purchaser can offload them when necessary at a moment's notice
to a host of players on the secondary markets.