Sovereign debt / MUS
Mauritius
Latest government debt 91.4% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.
Official risk classification
| Effective | Classification |
|---|---|
| Oct 14, 1999 | Category 3 of 7current |
| Jan 1, 1999 | Category 2 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
- General government (IMF GDD)
- 91.4% (2024)
- General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 86.1% (2024)
- Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
- 76.0% (2022)
- Peak debt
- 93.8% (2021)
- Sovereign crises
- 0
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- +10.7
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.
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; 2008Q2 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 (Mauritius 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 | $10.30B | 83.0% | $4.30B |
| 2016 | $10.44B | 80.5% | $1.80B |
| 2017 | $10.63B | 74.5% | $2.94B |
| 2018 | $11.23B | 71.7% | $3.22B |
| 2019 | $12.36B | 81.1% | $3.22B |
| 2020 | $12.40B | 101.3% | $2.67B |
| 2021 | $14.70B | 115.2% | $2.81B |
| 2022 | $17.65B | 124.1% | $905.9M |
| 2023 | $19.08B | 123.6% | $1.97B |
| 2024 | $20.36B | 123.2% | $1.66B |
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 Mauritius’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 $8.3M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).
| Creditor class (2024) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Other private creditors | $7.0M |
| Other official creditors | $1.3M |
| Total external | $8.3M |
In default (external) for 32 distinct years between 1971 and 2024. Peak external default stock: $14.3M.
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 Mauritius 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 Mauritius 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.