Japanese and European banks awash with QE cash are keeping loan rates low in the Middle East.
The regional Gulf banks can no longer support tightly priced deals for state-owned entities and sovereigns such as Qatar and Oman, but international lenders are happy to pick up the slack.
Pricing for Middle East loans will rise in 2016, but not by much. European and Japanese lenders will be the first in with cheap funding for as long as their central banks support it with their monetary policy.
The case is not so clear in African loans where credit risk keeps the cautious at bay for anything but the most vanilla deals and most international lenders are wary of committing to long-term infrastructure financing. Sure enough, the new lenders joining the African loan market are Gulf banks squeezed out of their home territory.
The Turkish banks which dominate the country's loan borrowing have a reliable following among global lenders, but they have been soaking up more euros in their in recent years.
Take Garanti Bank, for example. In 2012 its annual November loan refinancing was a €616m/$308m dual tranche deal, while in November this year the euros had grown to €940m and the dollars had shrunk to $267m. The new deal paid 75bp over Euribor/Libor.
The Turkish banks can use that cheap funding from international banks and invest in juicier local deals.
While the sanctioned Russian loan market is not likely to reignite soon, Turkey and the Middle East will continue to enjoy the benefits of easy money away from the US.