Our risk analysis
This is Debt Justice’s own risk analysis. You can read the methodology on the Our risk analysis page. Sources of statistics used in the methodology are listed below.
IMF risk analysis
These are taken from the country level Debt Sustainability Assessments published by the IMF, available on the IMF website here. Debt Justice updates a list of these assessments whenever a new risk rating is produced.
Government external debt payments as percentage of government revenue
These are not available from a single source for all countries.
Past figures for low- and middle-income countries are calculated from the World Bank International Debt Statistics database. Current and future estimates for such countries are taken from IMF Debt Sustainability Assessments or other IMF programme documents. Where these are not available, current and future estimates are also from the World Bank International Debt Statistics database. However, the World Bank figures are likely to underestimate the true number as they do not include payments on more recent loans.
Figures for high income countries are calculated by Debt Justice from various sources, usually from information provided by national governments such as national debt management reports.
Net creditor / debtor
These are not available from a single source for all countries.
Where available, the figures are the international investment position of a country, which is taken from the IMF’s International Investment Position database.
Otherwise, the figure is calculated from the country’s total reserves and total external debt listed in the World Bank International Debt Statistics database.
Private external debt
These are not available from a single source for all countries.
Where available, they are from the World Bank’s SDDS database.
If not available in the SDDS database, they are calculated from the IMF International Investment Position database and/or the World Bank International Debt Statistics database.
Current account balance
These figures are all from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook database.
Change in government spending
These figures are based on research conducted by Debt Justice for individual countries. The sources used for the calculations are usually IMF programme documents and the IMF World Economic Outlook database.
Who the government debt is owed to
Data presented on who government debt is owed to has been calculated by Debt Justice from a variety of sources. This could include IMF Debt Sustainability Analyses, World Bank International Debt Statistics, publicly available information on bonds and information contained within bond prospectuses, and national level sources from Finance Ministries and Central Banks.
