Venezuela

Official risk classification

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

External debt (World Bank IDS)

No IDS external-debt series for Venezuela. 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 Venezuela’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 $96.43B (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).

In default (external) for 46 distinct years between 1978 and 2024. Peak external default stock: $96.43B.

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).

• 20172000 onward
  Debt at start: 133.6% (General govt (IMF GDD))episode →
• 2004–20052000 onward
  Debt at start: 41.8% (General govt (IMF GDD))episode →
• 1995–19981980–1999
  Debt at start: 45.9% (Central govt (IMF GDD))episode →
• 1982–19901980–1999
  Debt at start: 18.6% (Central govt (IMF GDD))episode →
• 1898–1905Pre-1950
  No debt reading at startepisode →
• 1892Pre-1950
  No debt reading at startepisode →
• 1848–1881Pre-1950
  No debt reading at startepisode →
• 1826–1840Pre-1950
  No 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 Venezuela 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.

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.