Recently, there had been growing concerns over sovereign debts after Dubai stunned the world by announcing a need for a temporary debt repayment freeze.
S&P said that Spain will experience a “more prolonged period of economic weakness” than anticipated at the start of 2009 and has cut its AA+ debt rating outlook from stable to negative.
Portugal’s outlook was also revised to “negative” from “stable” by S&P while Greece had its credit ratings was reduced one step to BBB+ by Fitch Ratings and S&P.
One way of comparison is by looking at the percentage of each nation’s external debt to its GDP. CNBC did a study two months ago and compiled a list using numbers provided from the World Bank.
Here is the list of the largest nation debtors out of the world’s largest 75 economies:
Country Name, Gross External Debt, GDP, percentage of external debt vs GDP
- Ireland – 2.386tr, 188.4b, 1267%
- Switzerland – 1.338tr, 316.7b, 422.7%
- UK – 9.087tr, 2.226tr, 408.3%
- Netherlands – 2.452tr, 672b, 365%
- Belgium – 1.246tr, 389b, 320.2%
- Denmark – 607.38b, 203.6b, 298.3%
- Austria – 832.4b, 329.5b, 252.6%
- France – 5.021tr, 2.128tr, 236%
- Portugal – 507b, 236.5b, 214.4%
- Hong Kong – 631.13b, 306.6b, 205.8%
- Norway – 548.1b, 275.4b, 199%
- Sweden – 669.1b, 344.3b, 194.3%
- Finland – 364.85b, 193.5b, 188.5%
- Germany – 5.208tr, 2.918tr, 178.5%
- Spain – 2.409tr, 1.403tr, 171.7%
- Greece – 552.8b, 343b, 161.1%
- Italy – 2.31tr, 1.823tr, 126.7%
- Australia – 891.26b, 800.2b, 111.3%
- Hungary – 207.92b, 196.6b, 105.7%
- US – 13.454tr, 14.26tr, 94.3%
While US has the largest external debt, it is only ranked 20th while comparing it to GDP.
Iceland has a percentage of 999% while among the low ratios, Singapore, China and India have percentages of 10.7%, 4.7% and 4.6% respectively.