Sovereign debt / GMB
Gambia
Latest government debt 73.5% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). 1 sovereign-debt crisis episode on record, 1986 to 1988.
Official risk classification
| Effective | Classification |
|---|---|
| Jan 1, 1999 | Category 7 of 7current |
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.
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)
- 73.5% (2024)
- General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 78.5% (2024)
- Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
- 8.5% (2023)
- Peak debt
- 93.9% (2002)
- Sovereign crises
- 1
- Last crisis
- 1988
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- -7.2
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 (Gambia is classified Low 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 | $586.0M | 43.6% | $40.8M |
| 2016 | $623.1M | 42.8% | $43.7M |
| 2017 | $754.6M | 51.1% | $43.2M |
| 2018 | $778.0M | 47.4% | $49.3M |
| 2019 | $851.8M | 47.8% | $47.4M |
| 2020 | $964.0M | 54.0% | $40.7M |
| 2021 | $1.11B | 56.7% | $42.9M |
| 2022 | $1.18B | 54.3% | $41.4M |
| 2023 | $1.32B | 55.8% | $55.3M |
| 2024 | $1.64B | 66.4% | $77.1M |
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 Gambia’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 $35.0M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline). A further $27.4M of domestic (fiscal) arrears is tracked separately and is not included in that total.
| Creditor class (2024) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Other official creditors | $35.0M |
| Total external | $35.0M |
In default (external) for 47 distinct years between 1977 and 2024. Peak external default stock: $267.2M.
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).
- 1986–19881980–1999Debt at start: 64.0% (Central govt (IMF GDD))episode →
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
Every recorded Gambia sovereign-debt restructuring and the creditor loss (“haircut”) it imposed. The preferred haircut is the present-value measure (Sturzenegger–Zettelmeyer methodology); the face-value column is the headline principal write-down. Amounts restructured are in current US dollars. A crisis link appears where the restructuring year falls inside one of the sovereign-debt crisis episodes above.
| Year | Haircut (NPV) | Face value | Debt restructured | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 crisis → | 49.3% | 0.0% | $19.0M | Cruces and Trebesch (2013) |
Source: Cruces & Trebesch (2013), AEJ: Macro; updated in Graf von Luckner, Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2024), IMF Economic Review Kiel Institute / Trebesch sovereign-haircut database, research use with citation. Haircut and face-value figures are percentages; debt restructured is current US dollars. Methodology
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.