The IIF promotes global efforts to enhance the global debt architecture and closely monitors the rapidly evolving sectoral debt dynamics across mature and emerging markets, with particular emphasis on sovereign debt. In addition, the IIF works to implement the Principles for Stable Capital Flows and Fair Debt Restructuring – a set of guidelines formulated by a working group of representatives of emerging market borrowers and their official and private creditors.
Global debt across all sectors rose by over $10 trillion in 2019, topping $255 trillion. At over 322% of GDP, global debt is now 40 percentage points ($87 trillion) higher than at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis—a sobering realization as governments worldwide gear up to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Driven mainly by government borrowing, the debt to GDP ratio in frontier markets hit a fresh all-time high of 114% in Q3 2019, with total debt nearing $3.2 trillion, up by nearly $75 billion in the first three quarters of 2019.
The global debt-to-GDP ratio hit a new all-time high of over 322% in Q3 2019, with total debt reaching close to $253 trillion. Global debt is set to grow faster in 2020 and is estimated to exceed $257 trillion by the end of Q1 2020, driven mainly by non-financial sector debt.