Asia Steps Up Bond Support as Energy Shock Sends Yields Surging
彭博社财经This month’s surge in Asian bond yields has triggered an increase in debt buying across the region, as governments seek to limit the spillover from higher energy prices to local borrowing costs.
发布时间: 2026-03-31T08:00:00+08:00
作者: Marcus Wong
This month’s surge in Asian bond yields has triggered an increase in debt buying across the region, as governments seek to limit the spillover from higher energy prices to local borrowing costs.
Governments and central banks from South Korea to India and Indonesia are plowing funds into their bond markets to try to cap yields that have already risen to multi-year highs. Yields have been climbing on concern local economies will suffer from costs as they are net energy importers.
Korea’s government announced last week it would 5 trillion won ($3.3 billion) of sovereign bonds over two trading days, while the Reserve Bank of India said it’s purchasing 1 trillion rupees ($10.6 billion) of debt this month. Bank Indonesia has continued intervention in government bonds.
“Official bond purchases are better seen as efforts to limit disorderly moves,” as markets price in more persistent spillovers from higher oil prices and supply chain disruptions, said Fesa Wibawa, an investment manager at Aberdeen in Singapore.
“We wouldn’t rule out further interventions across Asia, especially if pockets of market stress emerge and the authorities judge that they have sufficient policy space to respond,” he said.
Bond yields have been marching higher across the region as the outbreak of the Iran war on Feb. 28 sent oil prices soaring. The Philippine 10-year yield has surged more than one percentage point in March, while Korea’s has risen by almost 50 basis points and Indonesia’s has climbed more than 40 basis points.
In addition to its emergency bond buyback, the Korean government also announced plans to redeem outstanding debt using surplus tax revenues. That followed the Bank of Korea’s decision earlier this month to up to 3 trillion won of treasury bonds to counter increased yield volatility.
The Korean government’s measures “will be effective in stabilizing the won rates market sentiment” ahead of the of the nation’s bonds into a major global debt index effective from April, Citigroup Inc. economist Kim Jin-Wook wrote in a research note last week.
Bank Indonesia’s market interventions are nothing new. Since the Covid pandemic, the central bank has boosted the proportion of government bonds it owns to around 25% of the total amount outstanding, up from just 10% at the start of 2020.
“The pace of increase in Indonesia government bond yields has reached levels where some form of intervention is needed to prevent a broader sentiment spillover,” said Winson Phoon, head of fixed‑income research at Maybank Securities. As foreign funds have been net sellers, “intervention would provide breathing space and help maintain orderly market functioning,” he said.
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Despite efforts by authorities to boost sentiment, investors are largely exiting their positions. Global funds have sold a net $1.6 billion of Indonesia’s bonds in March — on track for the largest outflows since October — while offloading about $730 million of Indian debt.
Bond intervention hasn’t been limited to Asia.
Brazil’s Treasury a cumulative 49.1 billion reais ($9.3 billion) of fixed-rate bonds in the three days through March 18, as the government sought to curb volatility in local debt markets.
In the long run, government and central bank intervention is seen as merely a temporary measure to counter extreme moves rather than a catalyst for a durable turnaround.
“At the end of the day, a foreign investor of Indonesian bonds will worry more about the rising fiscal price tag” of maintaining fuel subsidies than about whether Bank Indonesia intervenes, said Homin Lee, a strategist at Lombard Odier Singapore. “Short-term volatility smoothing is probably the best the government can hope for in a uniquely challenging environment like this.”
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