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FinObservatory

Sovereign debt / FJI

Fiji

Latest government debt 77.0% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.

Full crisis history (banking, currency, sovereign) →

Fiji’s latest debt of 77.0% 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 5 of 7
0 = exempt, 1 = lowest risk, 7 = highest · as of Jun 26, 2026
EffectiveClassification
Jun 25, 2018Category 5 of 7current
Jun 27, 2014Category 6 of 7
Jan 1, 1999Exempt (high-income, market terms)

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.

Central government (GDD)General government (WEO)
02550751001970198019902000201020202024WEO grossCentral

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)
77.0% (2024)
General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
79.1% (2024)
History
Peak debt
86.0% (2021)
Sovereign crises
0
Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
-3.8

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 (Fiji 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.

$3.87B
External debt stocks, total (DOD, current US$) (2024)
71.4%
External debt stocks (% of GNI) (2024)
$244.2M
Debt service on external debt, total (TDS, current US$) (2024)
9.5%
Total debt service (% of exports of goods, services and primary income) (2024)
27.2%
Short-term debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
34.8%
Multilateral debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
41.3%
Total reserves (% of total external debt) (2024)
YearTotal external debt% of GNIDebt service
2015$1.49B33.9%$344.7M
2016$1.40B30.1%$132.6M
2017$1.66B33.7%$178.7M
2018$1.63B31.2%$119.5M
2019$1.83B36.7%$223.2M
2020$2.05B49.3%$280.0M
2021$2.50B61.6%$134.2M
2022$2.99B63.5%$192.7M
2023$3.35B65.3%$218.6M
2024$3.87B71.4%$244.2M

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 Fiji’s government debt in default in 2021, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $63.6M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).

Creditor class (2021)Amount in default
Other official creditors$22.8M
China (official)$22.0M
Other private creditors$18.8M
Total external$63.6M

In default (external) for 32 distinct years between 1976 and 2021. Peak external default stock: $63.6M.

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 Fiji 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 Fiji 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.