Sovereign debt / ARM
Armenia
Latest government debt 50.3% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.
Official risk classification
| Effective | Classification |
|---|---|
| Jan 30, 2026 | Category 5 of 7current |
| Jan 27, 2006 | Category 6 of 7 |
| Jan 1, 1999 | Category 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). No sovereign-debt crisis years fall in this window.
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
- Central government (IMF GDD)
- 50.3% (2024)
- General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 50.0% (2024)
- Peak debt
- 67.4% (2020)
- Sovereign crises
- 0
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- -30.4
Quarterly debt (World Bank QPSD)
A higher-frequency companion to the annual IMF figures above: central government gross debt, quarter by quarter, from the World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt database. Armenia does not report the general-government perimeter to QPSD, so this is central government (a narrower perimeter that excludes state, local and social-security debt).
QPSD and the annual IMF WEO/GDD series are not the same measure: coverage of the public sector and the valuation of instruments (nominal, face or market value) can differ, so a quarterly QPSD reading and an annual IMF reading for the same period need not match. Read the quarterly line as within-year timing, not as a re-statement of the annual ratio.
Source: World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt (QPSD) World Bank QPSD, CC BY 4.0. Central government gross debt, percent of GDP; 2009Q3 to 2025Q4. Methodology
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 (Armenia is classified Upper 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.
| Year | Total external debt | % of GNI | Debt service |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $8.83B | 80.4% | $1.55B |
| 2016 | $9.86B | 91.3% | $1.46B |
| 2017 | $10.23B | 85.7% | $1.43B |
| 2018 | $10.73B | 84.7% | $1.67B |
| 2019 | $11.88B | 86.1% | $2.07B |
| 2020 | $13.06B | 105.0% | $1.94B |
| 2021 | $14.04B | 104.2% | $1.90B |
| 2022 | $15.93B | 83.9% | $1.99B |
| 2023 | $15.84B | 67.6% | $2.77B |
| 2024 | $16.40B | 66.0% | $1.82B |
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 Armenia’s government debt in default in 2003, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $46.1M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).
| Creditor class (2003) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Other official creditors | $46.1M |
| Total external | $46.1M |
In default (external) for 10 distinct years between 1993 and 2003. Peak external default stock: $126.9M.
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
No sovereign-debt crisis is recorded for Armenia in the five chronologies (banking or currency crises, if any, are on the full crisis page).
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 Armenia 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.