Emerging markets are in a much better position to weather a slowdown in the US economy than in the past, according to Templeton Asset Management, which attributes the strength to large fiscal reserves and strong macroeconomic trends.

Despite plenty of talk about emerging markets decoupling from the US market, Templeton executive chairman Dr Mark Mobius believes this outcome is unlikely because the world has become so interdependent.

“There is no question relationships between nations are growing because world trade and travel has been growing.

“But whereas in the past the US was the centre – the biggest economy in the world by far – this is no longer the case,” he said.

Mobius said that while the US economy’s influence has gradually diminished, other economies have continued to grow at much faster rates and the result is an emergence of “new centres of wealth and growth”.

This growth is not restricted to emerging markets, however, and Mobius said there is a lot of new growth taking place in frontier markets such as Qatar, UAE, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Nigeria and Vietnam, which are all forecast to grow between 7 per cent and 12 per cent in 2008.