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Country profile / NRU

Nauru

Use this profile to establish Nauru’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
17.6%
2024 (General govt (IMF GDD))
Crisis years by type
0
none in the five chronologies
Private credit by banks
n/a
not in GFDD
BIS credit-cycle data
Not covered
not in the BIS credit statistics

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

Economic scale

Nauru 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

No banking, currency, or sovereign-debt crisis is recorded for Nauru in the five chronologies (Global Macro Database, Reinhart-Rogoff, Laeven-Valencia, JST, ECB/ESRB).

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

Early-warning gauge

Model and evaluation →

The crisis early-warning model (ews-1.0) scores Nauru from realized data only: features dated 2024 or earlier, no forecasts and no nowcasts. 4 of the model’s 7 features are observed here, and the score places Nauru in decile 5 of 10 among the 196 countries carrying a current row.

Onset probability, 1-3 years
4.6%
logistic model, prediction year 2025
Decile of current scores
5 of 10
196 countries scored
Features observed
4 of 7
dated 2024 or earlier
Largest signed contributions vs training average
  • Credit-to-GDP gap (pp) [missing] -0.39
  • Real credit growth, 3y (%) [missing] -0.27
  • Current account / GDP (%) = 6.0 -0.16

An early-warning score flags a macro-financial configuration that resembles past pre-crisis years; it is not a forecast for Nauru. At the published operating threshold (p ≥ 12.5%), the era-blocked out-of-sample backtest gives precision 16.9% and recall 25.7%: most flags did not precede an onset, and most onset years went unflagged.

Source: Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory R6 | Laeven & Valencia (2026), IMF WP/26/94 | BIS credit-to-GDP gap and total credit (Data Portal) | Global Macro Database (release 2026_06). License: non-commercial research (inherits GMD / JST). Model ews-1.0, data vintage jst-r6(2020);lv-2026-wp2694(2023);bis-gap(2025-Q4);gmd-2026_06(cut2024). Methodology

Financial depth and soundness

Nauru has no World Bank GFDD financial-structure series.

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

Financial inclusion

Nauru 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

Nauru 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

Nauru 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

Nauru runs a current-account surplus

Nauru’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 Nauru has that series.
Current-account balance
2.6525
% of GDP
-50.00.0050.010020082025
Net international investment position
0.3224
US$ billion (level)
0.000.200.4020082024
Total reserves
No data for this country
Remittance inflows
0.002024
US$ billion
annual, 2008 to 2024

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

International borrowing

General government are Nauru's largest reported international issuer sector

Quarterly outstanding international debt securities issued by Nauru's residents, by issuer sector, in US-dollar billions from 1986-Q1 to 1995-Q1. “All issuers” is the total; the government, financial-corporation and non-financial-corporation lines are its components, each shown only where the BIS reports it.
All issuers
$0.05B
1995-Q1
General government
$0.05B
1995-Q1
All issuersGeneral government
International issues only (residence basis); domestic issuance is excluded, so this is not the country's total debt-securities outstanding.

Source: BIS debt securities statistics (international debt securities). License: free with "Source: BIS" attribution. Methodology

Income and wealth inequality

Cross-country inequality →

How concentrated Nauru’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 Nauru sits among reporting economies. WID extends its most recent years by extrapolation, so a latest reading is an estimate.

Top 10% income share
48.6%
WID pre-tax national income, equal-split adults, 2024
216 economies; median 47.0%; ranks above 138 of 215
Top 1% income share
16.1%
WID pre-tax national income, equal-split adults, 2024
216 economies; median 16.1%; ranks above 104 of 215
Top 10% wealth share
61.7%
WID net personal wealth, equal-split adults, 2024
216 economies; median 61.5%; ranks above 119 of 215
PIP survey Gini
0.324
World Bank PIP, consumption, 2012
171 economies; median 0.352; ranks above 54 of 170

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 17.6% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). Peak 246.7% in 2009. This is below the 80.7% median at which 2000+ sovereign crises began (a comparison, not a prediction).

Latest debt
17.6%
2024
Peak debt
246.7%
2009
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 Nauru, 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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