FinObservatory

Sovereign debt / ISR

Israel

Latest government debt 67.8% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.

Full crisis history (banking, currency, sovereign) →

Israel’s latest debt of 67.8% 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
Exempt
unclassified by design · as of Jun 26, 2026
EffectiveClassification
Dec 10, 2010Exempt (high-income, market terms)current
Jan 1, 1999Category 3 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.

General government (GDD)Central government (GDD)General government (WEO)Private non-financial (GDD)
0100200300198319902000201020202024PrivateGen govtWEO 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
General government (IMF GDD)
67.8% (2024)
Central government (IMF GDD)
66.5% (2024)
General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
67.7% (2024)
Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
111.8% (2024)
History
Peak debt
269.8% (1984)
Sovereign crises
0
Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
-12.8

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. Israel 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).

Latest quarter (Central government)
68.2%
2025Q3 · $429.76B
Annual, for comparison (General government (IMF GDD))
67.8%
2024 · different perimeter and valuation
0.050.01002000200220042006200820102012201420162018202020222024

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; 1998Q4 to 2025Q3. Methodology

External debt (World Bank IDS)

No IDS external-debt series for Israel. The World Bank’s International Debt Statistics covers low- and middle-income borrowing economies only, so high-income economies are absent by construction.

Debt in default (BoC-BoE CRAG)

No external debt in default recorded for Israel in the BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database (1960 onward).

Sovereign-debt crisis history

No sovereign-debt crisis is recorded for Israel 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 Israel 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.