Sri Lanka: debt owed to China

The estimated stock, 2000 to 2021

The largest single-year move in the estimated stock is 2021, when it rose by $1.90bn.

Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending. Selection: estimated stock owed to China by Sri Lanka, 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 49 loan-level records for Sri Lanka as part of its debt-estimate sample, spanning 2003 to 2017. Comparable commitments are available for 49 of those loans and sum to $8.97bn. 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 46 loans, grace period on 46, maturity on 46, any of the three on 46, and all three together on 46. The earlier file also carries 76 additional project rows for Sri Lanka outside that sample, so they are not included in this table.

Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending (2021 Mendeley replication loan file). Selection: 2021 replication loan records mapped to Sri Lanka 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 Sri Lanka reports owing to all creditors

Sri Lanka reported $58.74bn of total external debt to all creditors in 2021, of which $38.49bn is public and publicly guaranteed. The China estimate is 15.4% of the reported external total and 20.2% of the reported public and guaranteed stock. These are ratios of two different measurements, one estimated and one borrower-reported, and they are not a share of a single consistent total.

Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending (estimated stocks), and World Bank International Debt Statistics, borrower-reported via the Debtor Reporting System (all-creditor stocks). Selection: estimated external and PPG stock owed to China in 2021 against Sri Lanka's reported DT.DOD.DECT.CD and DT.DOD.DPPG.CD for the same year. Drawn swap balances are excluded from the estimated column: they are a central-bank liability the Debtor Reporting System's long-term-debt concepts do not carry. Methodology

People’s Bank of China swap drawings

Sri Lanka carried a drawn swap balance in 1 year of the panel, peaking at $1.57bn. A drawing is a liability to another central bank, and it is not netted out of a headline gross reserves figure.

Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending. Selection: every year in which Sri Lanka carried a drawn PBoC swap-line balance above zero. Methodology

The same balance measured against gross international reserves, for every country that has drawn

Chinese restructurings involving Sri Lanka

2 deals recorded between Sri Lanka and Chinese state creditors. These are context, not accounting: the source records face-value reduction as a flag rather than a magnitude, so no haircut percentage exists for them, and nothing here is netted off the estimated stock above.

Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, Hidden Defaults (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9925). Selection: every recorded restructuring agreement between Sri Lanka and a Chinese state creditor. Face-value reduction is a 0/1 flag in the source, not a percentage; the badge appears only where the source sets it. Methodology