Nigeria has been included in J.P. Morgan’s new frontier-market local-currency government bond index, with a 7.4 percent weighting.

The new benchmark, known as the Government Bond Index–Emerging Markets Edge (GBI-EM Edge), is expected to launch by the end of September and will track about $330 billion in local-currency government debt across 26 countries, according to Reuters.

Nigeria will be among the major constituents alongside Egypt, Vietnam, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The index has a maximum country weighting of 8 percent.

The development comes nearly 11 years after Nigeria was removed from J.P. Morgan’s GBI-EM in 2015. Its return could increase the visibility of Nigerian government securities among international fixed-income investors and potentially attract more foreign portfolio investment.

The index is expected to include government bonds worth at least $250 million and with a minimum remaining maturity of 2.5 years.

African markets are projected to account for about 45 percent of the index, while frontier Asian markets will make up nearly one-third.

The benchmark is expected to have an average nominal yield of about 10.4 percent, roughly 440 basis points above J.P. Morgan’s broader emerging-market local-currency index.

Back-testing reportedly showed that the new index would have generated returns about 1.2 percentage points higher than the mainstream emerging-market local-currency index since the end of 2017.

Bond indices are closely monitored by global fund managers because they serve as benchmarks for investment allocation across markets.

Nigeria’s inclusion follows months of discussions between the Federal Government and J.P. Morgan over the country’s return to the bank’s bond-index universe.