Bond markets in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region have seen primary and secondary activity surging in 2025, reflecting individual country’s sovereign strengths, regional corporate expansion, and greater international investor appetite, positioning the region as a growing hub for global fixed-income investors.
Bond issuance across the broader Middle East and Africa regions as tracked by Dealogic has hit a record US$223 billion in 2025 year-to-date. This marks a 30% year-on-year increase across sovereign and corporate bond issuers, who are tapping global capital markets to diversify their funding sources amid shifting local- and macro-economic conditions.
Of that, Sovereign, Supranational and Agency (SSA) constitutes US$122 billion, investment grade (IG) US$82 billion and high yield (HY) US$16.5 billion.
Within the Middle East specifically, the London Stock Exchange Group reported issuance of US$125.9 by September, with Saudi Arabia offering US$67.6 billion of bonds and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) placing the second largest offerings of $32.7 billion. Israel issued US$27 billion of fixed rate bonds and US$13 billion of CPI linked bonds.
“We expect publicly listed corporates’ annual capex needs will reach about $85 billion-$95 billion over 2025-2027, translating into an increase in corporate lending demand and cross-border issuance,” S&P Global analysts noted in in a paper in mid-November.
The higher levels of primary market activity supported liquidity in the secondary markets as well.
MarketAxess has seen MENA credit volumes increase by 7% overall in 2025, with a 23% increase in MENA corporate volumes.
“When we look at the breakdown of clients who are trading the sector, we see 70% of all volume being traded by Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) based clients and 26% from North American clients,” Dan Burke, global head of emerging markets
“Volumes are relatively even between e-trading and voice enquiries, but clearly the voice enquiries can be extremely large, particularly when the larger local accounts are involved,” noted one Tier 1 dealer.
Although smaller trades are more commonly executed electronically, block trades are also being increasingly facilitated by electronic protocols. These allow dealers to support direct execution with specific clients, while managing larger rebalances using portfolio trades and all-to-all trading to reduce information leakage.
“for US$5 million or greater increased 9% this year,” says Burke. “When we look at the universe of MENA trades on the platform this year, trades using our all-to-all trading protocol Open Trading made up 47% of total MENA volume, an increase of 23% year over year.”
This growth is likely to increase as global investors are explicitly sought out by local issuers to support their financing.
Market confidence had been weakened by the threat of expanding regional conflicts and wildly unpredictable US trade policies, but nevertheless investor appetite remained strong this year, supported by oil revenues, sovereign surpluses, and rating upgrades in countries like Oman, Morocco and Tunisia.
Confidence also rose in Egypt as it returned to the international debt markets, successfully drawing in Gulf State foreign direct investment (FDI), including an US$18.5 billion deal to support tourism from Saudi Arabian and Emirati investors.
The S&P analysts noted, “Large Saudi corporates are strategically diversifying their funding base by reaching out to global investors, while extending their maturity profiles. We view these developments as credit supportive but will monitor whether the accumulation of debt from these investments outpaces earnings generation.”
©Markets Media Europe 2025
