The International Monetary Fund has put the global debt stock at $184 trillion, representing the equivalent of 225 per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 2017.
The latest $184 trillion debt is $2 trillion higher than the estimated number released during Fiscal Monitor press conference in October 2018, because it includes end-2017 data and the debts of several countries who had not previously reported their updated data.
A statement issued by the Fund’s Press Officer, Ting Yan, on ‘Global Debt Database Update’
indicated that the IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, disclosed the figure at the conclusion of the Group of 20 (G-20) Summit in Buenos Aires.
The Fund stated: “Today, the International Monetary Fund updated its publicly available Global Debt Database – a comprehensive dataset covering public and private debt for virtually the entire world (190 countries) dating back to the 1950s.
“Today’s update of the GDD offers for the first time a glimpse of global debt developments up to 2017. By including both the sovereign and private sides of borrowing for the entire world, the GDD offers an unprecedented picture of global debt in the post-World War II era”, Yan added.
“On average, the world’s debt now exceeds $86,000 per person – more than two and half times the average income per-capita. The top three borrowers in the world (United States, China, and Japan) account for more than half of global debt, exceeding their share of global output,” the IMF added.
It would be recalled that the Fund had put the global debt at $182 trillion on December 1, warning highly indebted emerging-markets and low-income countries against what it termed pro-cyclical fiscal policies.
