Issuance has reached the highest year to date volume on record, rising 24% from same period last year, according to Dealogic, the investment banking research provider.
Average deal size has also increased by a third from last year to $125.2m.
Max Volkov, director in Latin American debt capital markets at Merrill Lynch, said: "Emerging markets have emerged as a distinct asset class. Investors are looking at the asset class as insulated from the volatility in the rest of the market although they are becoming more cautious."
In March, Petroleos de Venezuela, the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company, issued a $7.5bn high-yield bond in the largest debt offering from the emerging markets on record according to Dealogic.
This week, Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state oil company, sold $1.5bn in 10-year notes and added $500m to an existing 30-year bond issue. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch were joint bookrunners for the Pemex sale, which was used to fund a tender offer.
There was more than $4bn of demand for the 10-year notes and more than $1.5bn for the 30 -year paper according to market sources.
US dollar-denominated debt accounts for more than a third of all emerging market debt volume this year, hitting $116.5bn, with corporate bond issuance reaching $241bn, nearly three quarters of the total.
Credit Suisse is introducing an emerging market corporate bond index which is exclusively for US dollar-denominated fixed income issues from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. The new index currently includes the US dollar-denominated corporate bonds of 366 issuers with a market value of $275bn.
Jamie Nicholson-Leener, head of Latin America corporate credit research at Credit Suisse, said: “Our clients are increasingly pursuing opportunities in emerging markets worldwide. Based on discussions with our clients, we expect to see great interest in a global index that enables investors to compare regions to one another.”
Merrill Lynch runs the global emerging credit index but fund managers are reluctant to run tracker funds using it because it excludes several of the fastest growing markets.
JP Morgan, which operates an index covering emerging market sovereign debt, has consulted with fund managers about adding emerging market credit to its existing index series, but is thought to be concerned about liquidity and pricing.
Lehman Brothers, which runs the main index for global developed bond markets and others covering emerging market sovereign debt, is also understood to have considered setting up an index for emerging market corporate bonds.
Polina Kurdyavko, an emerging market credit portfolio manager at BlueBay, said there was demand for an emerging market diversified corporate index that could be used by long-only fund managers.
