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FinObservatory

Country profile / ERI

Eritrea

Use this profile to establish Eritrea’s economic scale, locate its financial structure among reporting peers, trace credit and crisis history, and read its sovereign and external balance sheets. Follow any section into the dedicated module, or audit the primary source cited beside it.

Latest government debt
260.4%
2019 (Central govt (IMF GDD))
Crisis years by type
1
1 banking, 0 currency, 0 sovereign-debt
Private credit by banks
18.6%
GFDD, 2014
BIS credit-cycle data
Not covered
not in the BIS credit statistics

Cross-border banking exposure: how much BIS-reporting banks lend to Eritrea.

Economic scale

Eritrea is outside the Penn World Table’s 185-economy coverage (mostly small territories and micro-states), so no population or GDP-scale series is available here.

Source: Penn World Table 11.0 (Feenstra, Inklaar and Timmer 2015). License: CC BY 4.0. Methodology

Crisis history

Full crisis atlas →

1 episode between 1993 and 1993. Consecutive crisis years are merged into episodes (gaps of up to two years bridged); each links to its episode page.

BankingCurrencySovereign debt

Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 | Reinhart-Rogoff (HBS BFFS) | Laeven & Valencia (2020, 2026) | Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database | ECB/ESRB Financial Crises Database. License: non-commercial research (inherits GMD / JST); cite all five chronologies. Methodology

Financial structure

Eritrea's private bank credit is below the reporting-economy median

Annual measures of Eritrea’s depth (private credit and deposits) and soundness (Z-score, nonperforming loans and concentration), in percentages and index points across the available World Bank GFDD history.
Private credit by banks
18.614
% of GDP
0.0020.040.060.019952014
Bank deposits
No data for this country
Bank Z-score
No data for this country
Nonperforming loans
No data for this country
Bank concentration
No data for this country
GFDD values end in 2021 (the dataset’s last release year); a flat recent tail is the data stopping, not the sector standing still.

Source: World Bank Global Financial Development Database (Sep 2022). License: CC BY 4.0. Values end 2021 (GFDD's last release year). Methodology

Financial development

Eritrea's financial development index is below the reporting-economy median

Eritrea’s annual 0-to-1 IMF composite of financial-system depth, access and efficiency, split between institutions (banks, insurers and funds) and markets (stocks and bonds). Methodology: Svirydzenka (2016), IMF WP/16/5.
Financial development index
0.0820
index, 0 to 1
0.000.050.100.1519802020
Financial institutions index
0.1620
index, 0 to 1
0.000.100.200.3019802020
Financial markets index
0.0020
index, 0 to 1
-1.000.001.0019802020
The IMF’s served series end in 2020; a flat recent tail is the data stopping, not the system standing still. The six depth/access/efficiency subindices are in the underlying dataset but not charted here.

Source: IMF Financial Development Index (IMF.MCM:FDI) | Svirydzenka (2016), IMF Working Paper WP/16/5. License: IMF, public open data with "Source: IMF, Financial Development Index" attribution. 0-1 scale; served values end 2020 (183 economies). Methodology

Financial inclusion

Eritrea is not surveyed in the World Bank Global Findex (162 economies covered), so no financial-inclusion series is available here.

Source: World Bank Global Findex Database 2025. License: CC BY 4.0. Survey waves; percent of adults age 15+. Methodology

Credit cycle

Eritrea is not in the BIS credit-statistics reporting set, so no credit-to-GDP gap, debt-service ratio, or property-price series is available here.

Source: BIS credit and debt-service statistics | BIS residential property prices. License: free with "Source: BIS" attribution. Methodology

Policy, shadow and exchange rates

Eritrea is in none of the BIS central-bank policy-rate set (48 economies), the Krippner shadow short rate set, or the BIS real broad effective-exchange-rate set (63 economies), so no monetary-stance or exchange-rate series is available here.

Source: BIS central bank policy rates | BIS effective exchange rates | Krippner shadow short rate estimates (LJK Limited). License: BIS series are free with "Source: BIS" attribution; Krippner shadow-rate estimates are cited as model estimates from LJK Limited and are not republished as bulk data. Methodology

External position

Eritrea runs a current-account surplus

Eritrea’s annual external position through each source’s latest observation: the current-account balance (IMF, percent of GDP), the net international investment position and total official reserves (both shown as US-dollar levels, in billions, because the IMF IIP and World Bank reserve series carry dollar values rather than ratios), the degree of capital-account openness (the Chinn-Ito index, 0 closed to 1 open), and remittance inflows. A positive current account or net-IIP reading is a surplus/creditor position; a negative one is a deficit/debtor position. Each panel appears only where Eritrea has that series.
Current-account balance
13.019
% of GDP
-50.0-25.00.0025.050.019922019
Net international investment position
No data for this country
Total reserves
0.1919
US$ billion
0.000.100.200.3019952019
Capital-account openness
0.002023
index, 0 = closed, 1 = open
annual, 1998 to 2023
Remittance inflows
0.002000
US$ billion
annual, 1998 to 2000

Remittance inflows are shown as external-flow context (household income received from abroad), not a FinObservatory risk score.

Current account and net IIP: IMF BOP/IIP, to 2025. Reserves: World Bank FI.RES.TOTL.CD, to 2025. Capital-account openness ends 2023. Remittance inflows end 2024; shown as context, not a risk score.

Source: IMF Balance of Payments and IIP Statistics | World Bank, Total reserves (FI.RES.TOTL.CD). License: IMF and World Bank, free with attribution ("Source: IMF"; World Bank reserves CC BY 4.0). Methodology

Source: Chinn-Ito index of capital-account openness (Chinn and Ito 2006). License: research use with citation only (Chinn-Ito); not for commercial redistribution. Methodology

Source: World Bank / KNOMAD Migration and Remittances Data. License: CC BY 4.0 (World Bank / KNOMAD). Methodology

Income and wealth inequality

Cross-country inequality →

How concentrated Eritrea’s income and wealth are. Top shares come from WID.world on equal-split adults (each adult in a couple assigned half the couple’s total); income (a flow) and wealth (a stock) are shown as distinct measures and never combined into one figure. The Gini coefficients are survey-based, on a 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (maximal concentration) scale: the World Bank PIP survey Gini and, where covered, the OECD disposable-income (post-tax, post-transfer) Gini. Each reading shows its year and, where a cross-country distribution exists, where Eritrea sits among reporting economies. WID extends its most recent years by extrapolation, so a latest reading is an estimate.

Top 10% income share
40.5%
WID pre-tax national income, equal-split adults, 2024
216 economies; median 47.0%; ranks above 57 of 215
Top 1% income share
10.5%
WID pre-tax national income, equal-split adults, 2024
216 economies; median 16.1%; ranks above 28 of 215
Top 10% wealth share
58.1%
WID net personal wealth, equal-split adults, 2024
216 economies; median 61.5%; ranks above 36 of 215

Source: WID.world (World Inequality Database) | World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform | OECD Income Distribution Database. License: WID.world and OECD IDD: display-with-attribution (owner no-redistribution ruling); World Bank PIP: CC BY 4.0. Top shares on equal-split adults; recent WID years are extrapolated. Ginis are survey-based and measure a different object from the fiscal top shares. Methodology

Latest government debt 260.4% of GDP (2019, Central govt (IMF GDD)). Peak 290.4% in 2017. This is 179.7 points above the 80.7% median at which 2000+ sovereign crises began (a comparison, not a prediction).

Latest debt
260.4%
2019
Peak debt
290.4%
2017
Sovereign crises
0
none on record

Source: IMF Global Debt Database | IMF World Economic Outlook. License: IMF, free with "Source: IMF" attribution. Methodology

Reading this profile

  • This page composes existing FinObservatory layers; it introduces no new data. Every figure is reproducible from the source cited in its section. See the methodology for the composition and each source’s coverage and staleness.
  • The peer line on a card (“N economies report; median…”) places this country’s latest reading among every reporting economy’s own latest reading for the same indicator, under the same filters. Latest years differ where reporting lags. It is a descriptive position (a count and a median), not a score; for indicators where lower is safer, such as nonperforming loans, a high position is not a good one.
  • The layers stop at different dates: the World Bank GFDD depth and soundness series end 2021 and the IMF Financial Development Index ends 2020, but the IMF FSI soundness panel is current (annual through 2024–2025 where reported); the Global Findex inclusion series are surveyed in waves and reach 2024; IMF debt runs to 2024; the Penn World Table runs 1950–2023; and the BIS statistics are the most current (credit through 2025, residential property to 2026Q1, and the policy rate and effective exchange rate into 2026 where reported). Krippner's month-end shadow short rate estimates, where this page has them, run 1995-01-31 to 2026-06-30 and are model estimates rather than observed policy rates. The external accounts reach 2025 (IMF balance-of-payments and reserves), 2024 (remittance inflows) and 2023 (capital-account openness). A quiet recent tail in one section can simply be where that source stops.
  • Where a source has no reading for Eritrea, the section says so in words instead of drawing a chart. A stated absence means the underlying dataset does not cover this country, not that the value is zero.

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