About the data
Definitions
Data sources
Data on the external debt of developing countries are gathered by the World Bank through its Debtor Reporting System. World Bank staff calculate the total external indebtedness of developing countries using loan-by-loan reports submitted by these countries on public and publicly guaranteed borrowing, along with information obtained from creditors through the debt data collection systems of such agencies as the Bank for International Settlements and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The data are also supplemented by information on loans and credits of major multilateral banks and loan statements of official lending agencies in major creditor countries and by estimates by country economists of the World Bank and desk officers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Despite an ongoing effort to standardize the reporting of external debt (see, for example, International Working Group of External Debt Compilers 1987), the coverage, quality, and timeliness of debt data vary across countries. Coverage varies for both debt instruments and borrowers. With a widening spectrum of debt instruments and investors and the expansion of private nonguaranteed borrowing, comprehensive coverage of long-term external debt becomes more complex. Reporting countries differ in their ability to monitor debt, especially private nonguaranteed debt. Last year more than 30 countries reported their private nonguaranteed debt to the World Bank; estimates were made for approximately 30 additional countries known to have significant private debt. Even public and publicly guaranteed debt is affected by coverage and accuracy in reporting-again because of monitoring capacity and, sometimes, willingness to provide information. A key part that is often underreported is military debt.
Variations in reporting rescheduled debt also affect cross-country comparability. For example, when rescheduling under the auspices of the Paris Club, some countries calculate the effects of rescheduling according to the date of the general agreement with the Paris Club, while others use the completion dates for the individual bilateral (post-Paris Club) agreements. To ensure consistency, the World Bank estimates the effect of the Paris Club agreement for the second group until the authorities reflect it in the reported data. Other areas of inconsistency include country differences in treatment of arrears, reporting of debt owed to Russia, and treatment of nonresident national deposits denominated in foreign currency.
• Total external debt is the sum of public, publicly guaranteed, and private nonguaranteed long-term debt, use of IMF credit, and short-term debt.
• Long-term debt is debt that has an original or extended maturity of more than one year and that is owed to nonresidents and repayable in foreign currency, goods, or services. It has three components: public, publicly guaranteed, and private nonguaranteed loans.
• Public and publicly guaranteed debt comprises long-term external obligations of public debtors, including the national government, political subdivisions (or an agency of either), and autonomous public bodies, and external obligations of private debtors that are guaranteed for repayment by a public entity.
• IBRD loans and IDA credits are the market-rate loans (from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the concessional loans (from the International Development Association) owed to the World Bank.
• Private nonguaranteed external debt comprises long-term external obligations of private debtors that are not guaranteed for repayment by a public entity.
• Use of IMF credit denotes repurchase obligations to the IMF for all uses of IMF resources (excluding those resulting from drawings on the reserve tranche). It is shown for the end of the year specified. It comprises purchases outstanding under the credit tranches, including enlarged access resources, and all special facilities (the buffer stock, compensatory financing, extended fund, and oil facilities), trust fund loans, and operations under the structural adjustment and enhanced structural adjustment facilities.
The principal sources of external debt information are reports to the World Bank through its Debtor Reporting System from member countries that have received IBRD loans or IDA credits. Additional information has been drawn from the files of the World Bank and the IMF. Summary tables of the external debt of developing countries are published annually in the World Bank's Global Development Finance (formerly World Debt Tables).