Chinese overseas lending / ATG
Antigua and Barbuda: debt owed to China
In 2021, Antigua and Barbuda is estimated to have owed China $164m, equal to 10.2% of its GDP, which ranks it 99 of 126 borrowers in the panel by dollars owed. The estimated stock peaked at $164m in 2021.
The estimated stock, 2000 to 2021
The largest single-year move in the estimated stock is 2011, when it rose by $23m.
Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending. Selection: estimated stock owed to China by Antigua and Barbuda, by year and instrument, 2000 to 2021. Zeros are estimated zeros (no known loans outstanding), not missing values. Methodology
Historical loan records from the 2021 release
These records come from the 2021 HRT Mendeley replication release, not the November 2025 refreshed stock panel charted above. The refresh uses the updated Franz, Horn, Parks, Reinhart and Trebesch methodology, so this table cannot be reconciled to the chart. The earlier release marks 2 loan-level records for Antigua and Barbuda as part of its debt-estimate sample, spanning 2008 to 2011. Comparable commitments are available for 2 of those loans and sum to $88m. These are gross commitments, not outstanding debt stocks. The stock methodology applies disbursement and amortisation profiles, with imputation where loan terms are missing, so the commitment sum must not be compared with the stock above. See the methodology. Terms are sparse by source: interest rate appears on 2 loans, grace period on 1, maturity on 1, any of the three on 2, and all three together on 1. The earlier file also carries 10 additional project rows for Antigua and Barbuda outside that sample, so they are not included in this table.
| Year | Project | Commitment, USD | Commitment, source currency | Terms | Creditor | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | China provides loan for airport terminal construction ID: ATG_10 · Source: AidData, Inter-American Dialogue | $45m | USD 45,000,000 | rate 0% | grace n/a | maturity n/a | China Ministry of Commerce (MofCom) Chinese government | Loan Zero-Interest Loan · borrower Central government |
| 2008 | Antigua Power Plant Project ID: ATG_8 · Source: AidData / Gelpern et al. (2021) | $43m | n/a | rate 2% | grace 5y | maturity 20y | China Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) State-owned policy bank | Loan Concessional · borrower Central government |
Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending (2021 Mendeley replication loan file). Selection: 2021 replication loan records mapped to Antigua and Barbuda and flagged DebtEstimateSample = 1 in that release. This is an earlier source universe, not the records used for the November 2025 refreshed stock panel. CommitmentUSD is a gross commitment flow and is not comparable to the charted stock. Commitment stays in its source currency, and ProjectDescription is rendered as free-text data from the file. Methodology
Against what Antigua and Barbuda reports owing to all creditors
No comparison is possible. Antigua and Barbuda has no row in the World Bank International Debt Statistics table. There is no reported all-creditor stock to measure the China estimate against, so the ratio is n/a, not zero and not a hundred percent. This is a difference in the scope of the two datasets, not evidence of anything hidden. The two-sources page lists every borrower in this position.