Sovereign debt / LBY
Libya
Latest government debt 142.7% of GDP (2017, Central govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.
Official risk classification
| Effective | Classification |
|---|---|
| Mar 31, 2011 | Category 7 of 7current |
| Jan 28, 2011 | Category 5 of 7 |
| Oct 20, 2006 | Category 6 of 7 |
| Jan 1, 1999 | Category 7 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.
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)
- 142.7% (2017)
- Peak debt
- 192.8% (2016)
- Sovereign crises
- 0
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- +62.0
External debt (World Bank IDS)
No IDS external-debt series for Libya. 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)
Stock of Libya’s government debt in default in 2017, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $3.50B (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).
| Creditor class (2017) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Other official creditors | $3.20B |
| Other private creditors | $300.0M |
| Total external | $3.50B |
In default (external) for 9 distinct years between 2004 and 2017. Peak external default stock: $4.50B.
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 Libya 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 Libya 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.