World’s riskiest markets stumble into crisis with dollars scarce

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Key Points

Shortages of dollars are crimping access to everything from raw materials to medicine..

For nations such as Sri Lanka, the trouble began years ago as officials spent valuable hard-currency reserves to keep local exchange rates artificially high...

Its tempting to say theres an EM crisis because of the Fed tightening, but that takes the human agency away from policymakers in select countries that were enacting unsustainable fiscal policies, said Samy Muaddi, head of emerging-markets fixed income at T. Rowe Price in Baltimore..

The year has already seen several debt-laden countries including Egypt, Pakistan and Lebanon drop their exchange rates as they attempt to unlock rescue funding, with currency traders bracing for a potential wave of devaluations...

For Brendan McKenna, an emerging-market economist and strategist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in New York, those who are willing to take the risk can find opportunity in countries with a clear reform agenda and a path toward support from official lenders, such as the IMF...

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