Despite a terrible two years for Turkey’s tourism sector, rocked by terrorism and political uncertainty, Ertuğrul, a businessman with five hotels on the country’s Mediterranean coast, has managed to keep up with his debt repayments. During the most desperate period he sold a textile factory and cut his staff from 800 to 200 to stay afloat.

He is hopeful that a return of Russian and European visitors in the coming months will help prices to recover, but remains anxious that any increase in the 4 per cent interest rate he is paying on an $8m loan will spell trouble. “If interest rates rise it is going to make things more and more difficult for me,” he says. “If it goes above 6 per cent then it will become intolerable.”

Ertuğrul, who declined to give a surname, is far from alone. Across the emerging world, businesses, households and governments loaded up on an estimated $40tn of cheap debt during the decade of loose monetary policy in the developed world that followed the global financial crisis.