FinObservatory

Sovereign debt / LTU

Lithuania

Latest government debt 38.2% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.

Full crisis history (banking, currency, sovereign) →

Lithuania’s latest debt of 38.2% 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
Jul 16, 2015Exempt (high-income, market terms)current
Jan 31, 2014Category 2 of 7
Jan 27, 2012Category 3 of 7
Jan 29, 2010Category 4 of 7
Jan 30, 2009Category 3 of 7
Jan 21, 2005Category 2 of 7
Jan 16, 2003Category 3 of 7
Jan 18, 2002Category 4 of 7
Jan 1, 1999Category 5 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)
025507510019932000201020202024PrivateGen 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)
38.2% (2024)
Central government (IMF GDD)
37.6% (2024)
General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
38.0% (2024)
Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
63.8% (2024)
History
Peak debt
45.9% (2020)
Sovereign crises
0
Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
-42.5

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)
43.4%
2025Q4 · $42.96B
Annual, for comparison (General government (IMF GDD))
38.2%
2024 · different perimeter and valuation
0.020.040.060.02000200220042006200820102012201420162018202020222024

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; 1998Q4 to 2025Q4. Methodology

External debt (World Bank IDS)

No IDS external-debt series for Lithuania. 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 Lithuania’s government debt in default in 1993, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $63.8M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).

Creditor class (1993)Amount in default
Other official creditors$63.8M
Total external$63.8M

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 Lithuania 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

Every recorded Lithuania 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
1940100.0%100.0%$7.6MMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)

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.