Countries by Government Debt-to-GDP Ratio 2025

What this metric means

Government debt-to-GDP measures gross liabilities of the general government relative to annual economic output. It is a stock-to-flow ratio: debt is the accumulated stock, while GDP is the yearly output denominator. A higher ratio means the debt stock is large compared with the size of the economy.

The metric is useful for comparing fiscal pressure, but it is not a credit-risk score. It does not subtract public financial assets, does not show interest payments, and does not reveal whether debt is domestic or external, short-term or long-term, local-currency or foreign-currency. Countries can have similar debt ratios but very different risk profiles because they borrow under different monetary, institutional and market conditions.

Top 10 countries by government debt-to-GDP in 2025

The upper end of the ranking combines very different fiscal stories. Japan’s ratio reflects a long-running advanced-economy debt stock with deep domestic funding; Sudan reflects fragile-state stress; Singapore requires asset-side context; Greece and Italy reflect euro-area debt legacies; and the United States shows why reserve-currency issuers still matter for global rates even when the risk profile differs from smaller borrowers.

Tie handling: values are displayed to one decimal place. Rows are ranked by the IMF WEO value used for the table before display rounding where available; if two displayed values remain indistinguishable at one decimal place, the source order is preserved and the visible tie is treated as a rounding limitation.

Full ranking: Top 100 countries and economies by government debt-to-GDP

The table ranks the 100 highest confirmed entries in this IMF WEO 2025 snapshot. It is a fiscal-burden comparison, not a solvency score: gross debt should be read together with net debt, interest costs, maturity profile, currency structure, growth and public-sector assets.

Source note: IMF World Economic Outlook April 2026, indicator GGXWDG_NGDP. Values are general government gross debt as percent of GDP for 2025 and are shown as IMF WEO estimates/projections, not final audited outturns. Ranks are sorted descending by value. Rounded ties are handled by unrounded/source ordering where available; visible one-decimal ties are noted as a rounding limitation.

Methodology

The ranking uses general government gross debt as a percentage of GDP for 2025 from the IMF World Economic Outlook April 2026 vintage. The IMF indicator code is GGXWDG_NGDP. Values are displayed to one decimal place and ranked in descending order, because the page identifies the highest debt ratios.

Rounded ties are handled carefully: the ranking uses the underlying order from the source value where available. When values are visually equal after rounding to one decimal place, the table keeps the established source order and treats the visible tie as a display limitation rather than a claim that the countries are exactly equal.

The metric does not measure solvency, default probability, debt affordability, fiscal governance, public assets, pension liabilities or future tax capacity. It is best used as a comparative fiscal-pressure indicator and read together with net debt, fiscal balance, interest payments, inflation, real growth, current-account balance, demographics and institutional quality.

Insights from the 2025 debt-to-GDP ranking

The centre of the Top 100 is also elevated. The median of the displayed table is 69.8% of GDP, and the simple average is 80.2%. That means the fiscal conversation is not only about the very top of the ranking; many middle-ranked countries also carry debt levels that can reduce budget flexibility when interest rates rise or growth slows.

What it means for readers

A high debt-to-GDP ratio does not automatically mean a country is near default, but it can narrow policy choices. New spending, tax cuts, emergency stimulus, defense budgets, pension promises and infrastructure programs all interact with the existing debt stock.

The ranking is most useful as a starting point for comparison. Japan, the United States and France have deep capital markets and institutional credibility; Sudan and other fragile cases carry a very different type of fiscal stress; Singapore must be read with public assets in mind. The same headline ratio can therefore mean different things depending on funding structure, currency, maturity, inflation and growth.

For investors, journalists, students and policy researchers, the next questions are whether debt is rising or falling, how much interest the government pays, whether the debt is in local or foreign currency, how much must be refinanced soon, and whether the public sector holds assets that offset the gross figure.

FAQ

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