EM banks: revisiting credit risks

Spillovers from the global banking crisis to EMs appear limited so far. Encouragingly, too, most EM banks appear to be well placed to weather a period of rising non-performing loans resulting from weaker growth and higher interest rates. That said, there are pockets of weakness among some large banks in India, Poland and Israel and, to a lesser extent, Chile and Korea. And developments of the past week underline the point that it may only take strains to emerge in one bank to lead to broader stress across the sector.