As Turkey hurtled toward one of the most politically divisive polls in its history, the country’s business leaders reacted in a curious manner. They ramped up production.

Ignoring terrorism threats, the yo-yoing of the Turkish currency and a president quick to pick fights with Europe, Turkish manufacturers in March reported their most buoyant month of economic activity in three years.

Turkey’s robust performance — exports during March were up 19 per cent on an annual basis — highlights what has been a string of unusually expansive data showings by emerging markets since the beginning of the year. As the stock market in the US takes a breather after a torrid run this year, emerging-market stocks and bonds have attracted large inflows from investors.

Worries about President Donald Trump’s anti-trade statements are fading, and a weaker dollar has also helped, giving once-downtrodden currencies like the Mexican peso, the Turkish lira and the Brazilian real a lift. Since the beginning of the year, the main exchange-traded fund for emerging markets, iShares MSCI Emerging Markets, is up 11 per cent, with funds that track markets like Mexico, Turkey, India and Argentina rising even more.

Stock and bond market gains in emerging markets can be fleeting, vulnerable to political turmoil and investors with short-term investment horizons. But for now, the mood is bullish. Last week, investors bid up Turkish stocks, betting that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s referendum victory in Turkey, giving the office of the presidency greater executive powers, would further bolster the economy.

The Turkish lira, which has born the brunt of investor fears, had one its stronger days the day after the referendum, gaining 2 per cent against the dollar.

And China said its economy, buoyed by heavy investment spending, had grown 6.9 per cent, a better figure than economists had projected. Other economies considered to be emerging markets — Mexico, South Korea and Brazil — are also overcoming deterrents, like volatile currencies, political upheaval and worries of a trade crackdown by the Trump administration, to generate stronger than expected economic growth.

This nascent boomlet follows a six-year slowdown in these once fast-growing economies. Fears that the Chinese economy would slam on the brakes, a slump in commodity prices and political scandals that hobbled countries like Brazil have taken a toll, spurring a broad exodus of global investment funds from such markets.

“Despite what is happening politically in mature economies, we are seeing a real broadening of growth in emerging markets,” said Ulrik Bie, an economist at the Institute of International Finance, a trade group for global banks, which bumped up its growth forecasts in light of recent data. “These economies are such a large part of the global economy, so this provides a really solid foundation for overall growth.”

The sources for these demand spurts have been varied. In China, import growth in volume terms, a major measure of domestic demand in the economy, was up 20 per cent during the first two months of the year. Business confidence in Mexico improved sharply in March.

The peso, which plunged sharply after the election of Trump, has regained all its value. For the year, the peso is up 10 per cent against the dollar.

And in Brazil, which is struggling to emerge from a devastating recession, the central bank slashed interest rates this month by the largest amount since 2009 in a bid to spur an economy that is revealing small, but persistent, signs of recovery.

According to an index of hard and soft economic data points compiled by the Institute of International Finance, growth in emerging economies was up 6.8 per cent through the first quarter this year — the model’s highest reading since 2011. As an early indicator, the growth tracker’s tally is by no means definitive, and it is entirely possible that the final figure for the quarter will be lower.

But economists at the institute say the model is a good spotter of economic trends, and it is clearly showing a sharp pickup in global emerging markets in recent months. “We are seeing a broad uptick in business confidence and PMIs in these countries,” said Bie, the IIF economist, referring to the purchase managers index, a gauge of private-sector manufacturing activity.

The impressive trade numbers coming from China (exports grew 16 per cent in March) as well as similarly robust export figures in South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia also point to a sharp recent pickup in global trade. The last few years have been poor for international commerce; fears of a China slowdown have been a major factor.

But shipping executives say there has been a remarkable increase in demand for container vessels, which carry most manufactured trade goods around the globe. According to the Harpex Shipping index, which follows container pricing trends, rates have soared 40 per cent this year.

Economists note that container shipping is the oxygen of global growth, and for the last few years the business has been in the doldrums. Shipping prices plummeted, pushing some firms into bankruptcy and forcing many ships to be scrapped.

The turnaround, coming so quickly after a bad 2016, has caught the industry by surprise. “There is definitely something going on here,” said Nick Bailey, the chief commercial officer at Lomar Shipping, a container-focused shipper owned by the Libra Group. “The market from mid last year to today has doubled.”

China has been the single largest purchaser of container ships, Bailey, who is based in Singapore, said. He noted that many were being used to transport goods from hubs like Shanghai to smaller, regional ports.

“This is being driven by domestic demand in China,” he said. “It is a big part of this growth story.”

- New York Times News Service