Sovereign debt / MAR
Morocco
Latest government debt 70.0% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). 2 sovereign-debt crisis episodes on record, 1903 to 1990.
Official risk classification
| Effective | Classification |
|---|---|
| Oct 20, 2006 | Category 3 of 7current |
| Jan 1, 1999 | Category 4 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.
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)
- 70.0% (2024)
- General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 67.7% (2024)
- Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
- 61.4% (2024)
- Peak debt
- 104.0% (1985)
- Sovereign crises
- 2
- Last crisis
- 1990
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- -10.7
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. Morocco 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).
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; 2014Q4 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 (Morocco 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.
| Year | Total external debt | % of GNI | Debt service |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $44.63B | 41.1% | $3.58B |
| 2016 | $47.83B | 43.5% | $3.89B |
| 2017 | $51.36B | 44.0% | $4.01B |
| 2018 | $50.69B | 40.4% | $4.08B |
| 2019 | $55.28B | 43.5% | $4.26B |
| 2020 | $66.01B | 54.9% | $5.30B |
| 2021 | $65.69B | 46.9% | $6.63B |
| 2022 | $64.97B | 50.4% | $6.02B |
| 2023 | $69.63B | 48.9% | $5.79B |
| 2024 | $67.99B | 44.7% | $8.90B |
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 Morocco’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 $50K (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline). A further $520.0M of domestic (fiscal) arrears is tracked separately and is not included in that total.
| Creditor class (2024) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Other official creditors | $50K |
| Total external | $50K |
In default (external) for 46 distinct years between 1970 and 2024. Peak external default stock: $6.35B.
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).
- 1983–19901980–1999Debt at start: 83.6% (Central govt (IMF GDD))episode →
- 1903–1904Pre-1950No 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 Morocco 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 crisis → | 23.5% | 0.0% | $538.0M | Cruces and Trebesch (2013) |
| 1987 crisis → | 21.3% | 0.0% | $2.44B | Cruces and Trebesch (2013) |
| 1990 crisis → | 40.3% | 0.0% | $3.20B | 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.