FinObservatory

Sovereign debt / AGO

Angola

Latest government debt 62.5% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). 2 sovereign-debt crisis episodes on record, 1976 to 2003.

Full crisis history (banking, currency, sovereign) →

Angola’s latest debt of 62.5% is below the 80.7% median at which sovereign crises of the 2000+ era began. This is a comparison, not a prediction. A country can default well below these medians (Argentina defaulted in 2001 at 48.0% of GDP) or carry the world’s highest ratio without defaulting (Japan, above 230%). Default risk turns on debt composition, fiscal capacity, credit history and market access, not the level alone.

Official risk classification

Current classification
Category 6 of 7
0 = exempt, 1 = lowest risk, 7 = highest · as of Jun 26, 2026
EffectiveClassification
Jun 24, 2016Category 6 of 7current
Oct 26, 2012Category 5 of 7
Feb 1, 2008Category 6 of 7
Jan 1, 1999Category 7 of 7

The CRC scores the likelihood a country services its external debt on an eight-step scale, from 0 to 7, and sets the minimum premiums the OECD Arrangement participants charge on officially supported export credit. Categories 1 to 7 are the risk ladder (1 lowest, 7 highest). Category 0, and the blank status the OECD has used for these countries since 2013, mark high-income OECD and high-income euro-area economies that are exempt because their credit is priced on market terms. An exempt status is unclassified by design, not a data gap and not a zero-risk rating.

Source: OECD, Country Risk Classifications of the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits OECD CRC, free reuse with attribution. Category is an ordinal 0-7 risk step, not a probability; 0 and blank denote exemption. Methodology

Debt trajectory, 1980 onward

Debt to GDP by perimeter, observed years only (no IMF forecast years). Central-government debt is mechanically below general government (it excludes state, local and social-security debt). Shaded bands are sovereign-debt crisis years.

Central government (GDD)General government (WEO)
05010015019952000201020202024CentralWEO gross

Source: IMF Global Debt Database (Mbaye, Moreno-Badia & Chae, IMF WP/18/111) | IMF World Economic Outlook Debt is % of GDP; crisis-year shading from the sovereign-debt chronologies. Methodology

Debt profile

Latest by perimeter
Central government (IMF GDD)
62.5% (2024)
General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
57.1% (2024)
History
Peak debt
138.1% (1995)
Sovereign crises
2
Last crisis
2003
Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
-18.2

External debt (World Bank IDS)

External debt owed to non-residents, from the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics, which covers low- and middle-income economies only (Angola is classified Lower middle income). Dollar figures are current US dollars; ratio figures are percentages, as labelled. This is external debt in USD, a different measure from the government debt-to-GDP ratios above; do not compare the two directly.

$58.73B
External debt stocks, total (DOD, current US$) (2024)
79.6%
External debt stocks (% of GNI) (2024)
$10.87B
Debt service on external debt, total (TDS, current US$) (2024)
28.9%
Total debt service (% of exports of goods, services and primary income) (2024)
9.9%
Short-term debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
10.6%
Multilateral debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
26.9%
Total reserves (% of total external debt) (2024)
YearTotal external debt% of GNIDebt service
2015$48.77B56.8%$8.58B
2016$57.43B114.8%$10.91B
2017$58.75B84.9%$9.11B
2018$61.79B84.3%$11.94B
2019$62.29B96.6%$10.73B
2020$65.41B148.2%$7.81B
2021$66.02B108.1%$9.95B
2022$60.45B62.7%$15.28B
2023$57.27B74.6%$12.56B
2024$58.73B79.6%$10.87B

Source: World Bank International Debt Statistics (IDS) World Bank IDS, CC BY 4.0. Units: current US dollars (.CD series) and percent (.ZS series); repayment-schedule years beyond 2024 excluded. Methodology

Debt in default (BoC-BoE CRAG)

Stock of Angola’s government debt in default in 2024, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $272.0M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline). A further $2.85B of domestic (fiscal) arrears is tracked separately and is not included in that total.

Creditor class (2024)Amount in default
Other private creditors$272.0M
Total external$272.0M

In default (external) for 38 distinct years between 1987 and 2024. Peak external default stock: $14.39B.

Source: BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database 2025 (Beers, Ndukwe & Berry, Bank of Canada SAN 2025-24) BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database, Bank of Canada terms (free use with attribution). Units: current US dollars; total excludes domestic arrears. Methodology

Sovereign-debt crisis history

Each episode with the government debt-to-GDP ratio in its start year, where a reading exists. Episode dates use the same merge as the crisis atlas (consecutive crisis years bridged across gaps of up to two years).

Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 (Müller, Xu, Lehbib & Chen 2025) | Reinhart-Rogoff via HBS BFFS | Laeven & Valencia (2020) Methodology

Restructuring history and creditor losses

No sovereign-debt restructuring on record for Angola in the Cruces–Trebesch haircut database (1815 to present).

Reading this profile

  • Debt levels mix perimeters. The headline and debt-at-start figures fall back through IMF general government, then central government, then WEO gross debt, then (before 1980) the GMD historical series. Central-government readings understate the general-government ratio.
  • Crisis flags end in 2016 (Reinhart-Rogoff) and 2017 (GMD, Laeven-Valencia), while debt runs to 2024. “Years since last crisis” and the absence of recent crises reflect where the sources stop, not a guarantee of calm.
  • Debt level is a weak predictor of default on its own; see the methodology for the debt-intolerance evidence and the full construction.