FinObservatory

Sovereign debt / HND

Honduras

Latest government debt 41.1% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). 3 sovereign-debt crisis episodes on record, 1828 to 2016.

Full crisis history (banking, currency, sovereign) →

Honduras’s latest debt of 41.1% 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
Oct 28, 2016Category 5 of 7current
Jun 29, 2007Category 6 of 7
Mar 19, 1999Category 7 of 7
Jan 1, 1999Category 6 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.

General government (GDD)Central government (GDD)General government (WEO)Private non-financial (GDD)
010020030019501960198020002024PrivateCentralWEO grossGen govt

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
General government (IMF GDD)
41.1% (2024)
Central government (IMF GDD)
47.9% (2024)
General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
41.5% (2024)
Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
76.3% (2024)
History
Peak debt
200.3% (1990)
Sovereign crises
3
Last crisis
2016
Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
-39.6

Quarterly debt (World Bank QPSD)

A higher-frequency companion to the annual IMF figures above: general government gross debt, quarter by quarter, from the World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt database.

Latest quarter (General government)
n/a
2025Q4 · $15.78B
Annual, for comparison (General government (IMF GDD))
41.1%
2024 · different perimeter and valuation
0.020.040.060.080.0200220042006200820102012201420162018202020222024

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. General government gross debt, percent of GDP; 2000Q4 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 (Honduras 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.

$14.30B
External debt stocks, total (DOD, current US$) (2024)
41.8%
External debt stocks (% of GNI) (2024)
$1.79B
Debt service on external debt, total (TDS, current US$) (2024)
18.1%
Total debt service (% of exports of goods, services and primary income) (2024)
12.3%
Short-term debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
44.4%
Multilateral debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
56.2%
Total reserves (% of total external debt) (2024)
YearTotal external debt% of GNIDebt service
2015$7.63B39.1%$1.28B
2016$7.62B37.7%$928.8M
2017$8.75B40.3%$954.6M
2018$9.18B41.4%$1.02B
2019$9.76B42.5%$891.1M
2020$11.07B51.0%$1.52B
2021$12.51B48.5%$1.20B
2022$12.64B43.7%$1.67B
2023$12.94B40.8%$1.76B
2024$14.30B41.8%$1.79B

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 Honduras’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 $27.4M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline). A further $441.0M of domestic (fiscal) arrears is tracked separately and is not included in that total.

Creditor class (2024)Amount in default
Other official creditors$27.0M
Other private creditors$390K
Total external$27.4M

In default (external) for 48 distinct years between 1977 and 2024. Peak external default stock: $1.52B.

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).

  • 1981–20161980–1999
    Debt at start: 41.8% (Central govt (IMF GDD))episode →
  • 1873–1925Pre-1950
    No debt reading at startepisode →
  • 1828–1867Pre-1950
    No debt reading at startepisode →

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 Honduras 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.

YearHaircut (NPV)Face valueDebt restructuredSource
1867 crisis →88.2%38.9%$539KMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
1925 crisis →99.9%96.0%$26.0MMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
1989 crisis →73.2%0.0%$132.0MCruces and Trebesch (2013)
2001 crisis →82.0%82.0%$13.0MCruces 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.