Sovereign debt / IRQ
Iraq
Latest government debt 42.9% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.
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). 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)
- 42.9% (2024)
- General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 45.2% (2024)
- Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
- 12.3% (2024)
- Peak debt
- 344.3% (2004)
- Sovereign crises
- 0
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- -37.8
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 (Iraq 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 | $19.14B | 11.6% | $1.89B |
| 2016 | $23.35B | 14.1% | $1.36B |
| 2017 | $28.08B | 15.1% | $1.47B |
| 2018 | $27.80B | 12.3% | $2.01B |
| 2019 | $27.49B | 11.8% | $2.71B |
| 2020 | $26.33B | 14.7% | $4.02B |
| 2021 | $25.36B | 12.2% | $4.12B |
| 2022 | $22.72B | 7.9% | $4.64B |
| 2023 | $20.32B | 7.5% | $4.49B |
| 2024 | $17.52B | 6.2% | $3.42B |
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 Iraq’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 $43.29B (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline). A further $10.69B of domestic (fiscal) arrears is tracked separately and is not included in that total.
| Creditor class (2024) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Other official creditors | $43.29B |
| Total external | $43.29B |
In default (external) for 37 distinct years between 1988 and 2024. Peak external default stock: $111.23B.
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 Iraq in the five chronologies.
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 Iraq 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 89.4% | 81.5% | $17.71B | 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.