Government Debt by Country – Global Debt Tracker

Source: BIS total credit statistics, Bank for International Settlements, WS_TC 2.0. Selection: quarterly, general government borrower, all lending sectors, nominal or market value, percentage of GDP, adjusted for breaks. The quarterly end-of-period debt stock is divided by the sum of the latest four quarters of GDP. These are not interest payments, a budget deficit, household debt, private-sector debt or a live national-debt total.

The target measure is gross consolidated general government core debt: currency and deposits, loans and debt securities. It generally covers central, state and local government and social security funds, excluding public enterprises. Country-specific exceptions and proxies apply. Core debt is narrower than some IMF/OECD public-debt or gross-financial-liability measures. It is not the U.S. federal debt clock. Read the official BIS country coverage and exceptions before interpreting differences.

Nominal value and market value are different measures, not interchangeable observations. A missing nominal series is never filled with market data. South Korea is available in the market-value view only in the bundled source response; China, India, Brazil and other economies may lack market-value data. Missing observations remain unavailable.

BIS may interpolate, splice, backdate, extrapolate or use proxy sources when constructing its published histories. Silver Dominion does not estimate missing observations or splice valuation series. Published source observations and flags are retained. The annual change view is a Silver Dominion calculation: debt-to-GDP ratio minus the ratio exactly four quarters earlier, in percentage points; it is not a percent growth rate of debt. Historical series can be revised.

Latest per economy uses each area’s own latest published quarter. Common quarter selects the latest quarter present in all primary economies that have the selected valuation history; it reports the number participating and never substitutes another quarter. The history panel remains independent of this card-period filter. The euro area is a BIS aggregate; membership follows the source and overlaps its member countries. No world debt total is calculated.

By default, the first 15 cards follow the shared introductory selection: United States, China, Euro Area, Japan, United Kingdom, India, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden and Israel. This is a fixed presentation order, not a debt ranking or a list of the 15 largest countries. Phones initially show the first eight. When Highest value, Lowest value or Country name A–Z is selected, all available economies are sorted together, including the first 15 desktop or eight mobile cards; Show more continues in the selected order. Missing observations appear last in value-based sorts. Search, the selector and the closed full overview also provide access to other economies.

One shared daily source check uses WordPress cron; BIS publishes these statistics quarterly. A host cron or site traffic is required. Failed, incomplete or older responses retain the last verified cache. Verification dates and observation quarters are different. Verification older than seven days and observations more than three quarters behind are labelled.

BIS data are freely accessible subject to BIS terms of permitted use. Retain BIS attribution, identify independent transformations and do not charge users an additional fee for inclusion of these statistics. Any translation is not an official BIS translation. BIS does not endorse Silver Dominion or warrant data accuracy, completeness or fitness for purpose. This tool is information, not investment advice. GPL applies to the plugin code, not a new licence for BIS statistics.

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