Markets in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE recorded growth in the fourth quarter. A press release received here also says that the EMI edged slightly higher to 52.2, from 52.0 in Q3, reflecting a subdued rate of economic expansion as world trade declined during 2011, following its peak earlier in the year.

The risk of further economic contagion from the US, the UK and even the emerging nations themselves weighed heavily on sentiment.

Consistent with a trend identified in the previous EMI, service activity outperformed manufacturing, as the divergence between each sub-index reached its widest in 11 quarters.

Emerging market manufacturing output fell for a second successive quarter and at the sharpest pace since Q1, 2009, driven by a reduction in factory output across emerging Asia.

In contrast, service providers saw business activity growth accelerate in Q4 from the nine-quarter low seen in Q3, and the services sector expressed continued optimism in its one-year business outlook, although the degree of positive sentiment was muted relative to previous indices.

Price pressures eased to a ten-quarter low as manufacturers and service providers felt the benefits of ongoing quantitative tightening by central banks across the emerging world in response to inflationary pressures identified by previous HSBC EMIs. The Q4 EMI signaled that the index monitoring manufacturing input price trends was more than 19 points lower than one year earlier.

Stephen King, HSBC’s chief economist, said: “Emerging markets finished 2011 with only a marginal improvement in economic expansion for the final quarter, emphasizing a decline in world trade growth over the year after peaking at the beginning of 2011. Although not recording the previous lows at the height of the recession in late 2008 and early 2009, this quarter’s EMI is far from those levels reached in the early months of recovery during late 2009 and early 2010.”

King added: “While some have blamed a reduction in emerging market activity on factors beyond their own control, namely the euro zone crisis, and weakness both in the US and UK, the emerging economies themselves have also contributed to a lack of momentum.