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FinObservatory

Sovereign debt / TKM

Turkmenistan

Latest government debt 4.6% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.

Full crisis history (banking, currency, sovereign) →

Turkmenistan’s latest debt of 4.6% 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
Category 7 of 7
0 = exempt, 1 = lowest risk, 7 = highest · as of Jun 26, 2026
EffectiveClassification
Jan 31, 2020Category 7 of 7current
Feb 1, 2008Category 6 of 7
Jan 1, 1999Category 7 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)
05010015019972000201020202024Gen govtCentralWEO gross

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)
4.6% (2024)
Central government (IMF GDD)
4.6% (2024)
General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
4.1% (2024)
History
Peak debt
107.9% (1998)
Sovereign crises
0
Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
-76.1

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 (Turkmenistan 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.

$3.32B
External debt stocks, total (DOD, current US$) (2024)
5.2%
External debt stocks (% of GNI) (2024)
$974.1M
Debt service on external debt, total (TDS, current US$) (2024)
22.1%
Total debt service (% of exports of goods, services and primary income) (1997)
0.9%
Short-term debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
42.1%
Multilateral debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
55.4%
Total reserves (% of total external debt) (1999)
YearTotal external debt% of GNIDebt service
2015$7.00B20.8%$1.47B
2016$8.17B23.2%$1.52B
2017$8.65B23.8%$1.73B
2018$8.16B20.9%$1.83B
2019$6.65B14.9%$2.16B
2020$5.77B12.7%$2.09B
2021$4.99B10.0%$1.65B
2022$4.65B8.0%$1.14B
2023$3.92B6.5%$1.16B
2024$3.32B5.2%$974.1M

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 Turkmenistan’s government debt in default in 2010, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $940K (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).

Creditor class (2010)Amount in default
Other official creditors$940K
Total external$940K

In default (external) for 17 distinct years between 1994 and 2010. Peak external default stock: $200.8M.

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 Turkmenistan 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 Turkmenistan 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.