Sovereign debt / SLB
Solomon Islands
Latest government debt 22.0% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.
Official risk classification
| Effective | Classification |
|---|---|
| Jan 21, 2005 | Exempt (high-income, market terms)current |
| Jan 25, 2001 | Category 7 of 7 |
| Jan 24, 2000 | Category 6 of 7 |
| Jan 1, 1999 | Exempt (high-income, market terms) |
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)
- 22.0% (2024)
- General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
- 26.1% (2024)
- Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
- 19.3% (2024)
- Peak debt
- 72.1% (1987)
- Sovereign crises
- 0
- Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
- -58.7
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 (Solomon Islands 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 | $207.5M | 16.2% | $14.0M |
| 2016 | $263.8M | 19.7% | $22.9M |
| 2017 | $322.6M | 22.4% | $29.8M |
| 2018 | $316.8M | 19.9% | $35.4M |
| 2019 | $305.0M | 19.0% | $25.8M |
| 2020 | $322.6M | 20.5% | $31.8M |
| 2021 | $448.6M | 29.1% | $11.5M |
| 2022 | $477.4M | 30.3% | $11.6M |
| 2023 | $527.8M | 31.3% | $29.9M |
| 2024 | $596.1M | 33.8% | $26.0M |
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 Solomon Islands’s government debt in default in 2011, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $25.3M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).
| Creditor class (2011) | Amount in default |
|---|---|
| Other private creditors | $23.7M |
| Other official creditors | $1.6M |
| Total external | $25.3M |
In default (external) for 21 distinct years between 1990 and 2011. Peak external default stock: $113.8M.
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 Solomon Islands 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 Solomon Islands 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.