Sovereign debt / PRI
Puerto Rico
Latest government debt 16.9% of GDP (2024, General govt gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.
Official risk classification
Puerto Rico is not in the OECD Country Risk Classification set, so no export-credit risk category is recorded. The classification covers the countries the OECD Arrangement participants price export credit for; absence here is a coverage limit, not a zero-risk signal.
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 gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 16.9% (2024)
- Peak debt
- 54.5% (2014)
- Sovereign crises
- 0
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- -63.8
External debt (World Bank IDS)
No IDS external-debt series for Puerto Rico. 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 Puerto Rico’s government debt in default in 2022, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $61.23B (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).
| Creditor class (2022) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Foreign-currency bonds | $61.23B |
| Total external | $61.23B |
In default (external) for 8 distinct years between 2015 and 2022. Peak external default stock: $61.23B.
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 Puerto Rico in the five chronologies.
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 Puerto Rico 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.