Central government debt (% of GDP)
Entire stock of direct government fixed-term contractual obligations to others outstanding, as a share of GDP.
- World average (population-weighted)
- 74.2 %
- across 33 countries, 2024
- Latest observation
- 2026
- Source updated
- 13 Jul 2026
- CountryAtlas refreshed
- 11 Sep 2026
- Snapshot 20260911T072322Z
World map
One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.
No data available
Trend
Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.
Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.
Highest and lowest
The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2024.
Top 5
- 12.7 %
- 17.9 %
- 22.3 %
- 26.0 %
- 26.6 %
Source: World Bank — WDI · GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS
Bottom 5
- 29Spain105.6 %
- 107.3 %
- 115.8 %
- 130.7 %
- 167.8 %
Source: World Bank — WDI · GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS
Compare countries
Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.
No series for the selected countries.
Definition
- Definition
- Entire stock of direct government fixed-term contractual obligations to others outstanding, as a share of GDP.
- Unit
- % of GDP (% GDP)
- Frequency
- Annual
- Aggregation
- none · Lower is better
- Valid range
- 0 – 600
Sources & provenance
Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.
- Priority #1Open at source109 countries · 1,648 obs. · → 2024 · CC BY 4.0
Debt is the entire stock of direct government fixed-term contractual obligations to others outstanding on a particular date. It includes domestic and foreign liabilities such as currency and money deposits, securities other than shares, and loans. It is the gross amount of government liabilities reduced by the amount of equity and financial derivatives held by the government. Because debt is a stock rather than a flow, it is measured as of a given date, usually the last day of the fiscal year. Central government is the part of general government that includes all administrative departments of the national executive, legislative, and judicial functions, other central agencies and those non-market producers controlled by the central government, whose competence extends normally over the whole economic territory. This indicator is expressed as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is the total income earned through the production of goods and services in an economic territory during an accounting period. Source: Government Finance Statistics Yearbook and data files, International Monetary Fund (IMF)
- Priority #2Open at source1 countries · 241 obs. · → 2026 · Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED; third-party series subject to their own terms · limited to 1 countries
Federal Debt: Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product — Percent of GDP — Seasonally Adjusted
Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.
Countries without data
Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.
Downloads & API
Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.
API example
One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=government-debt-pct-gdp" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'