Pakistan’s total external debt has almost doubled over the decade ending in 2025, climbing from $68.67 billion in 2015 to roughly $135.11 billion, according to the World Bank’s latest International Debt Report.
The bank’s 2026 International Debt Statistics put the stock at $135.107 billion at the end of 2025, up from $129.92 billion a year earlier. About $107.07 billion of that was public and publicly guaranteed debt, while private non-guaranteed external debt stood at $17.58 billion and short-term borrowing at $10.45 billion.
Heavy reliance on multilateral and bilateral lenders
The figures highlight how much Pakistan depends on multilateral and bilateral financing. Multilateral institutions accounted for around $56.83 billion of its public and publicly guaranteed external debt, while bilateral creditors held about $42.43 billion. Private creditors were owed a further $7.8 billion.
China was the largest individually identified creditor, with outstanding debt of roughly $22.4 billion. The World Bank ranked second at about $19.2 billion, followed by the Asian Development Bank at $16.83 billion.
The report also noted that China extended the maturity of $2 billion in loans to Pakistan during 2025. Separately, the International Monetary Fund disbursed around $2.3 billion in new funds under its Extended Fund Facility and Resilience and Sustainability Facility arrangements.
Official loans cheaper than private borrowing
The report drew a sharp contrast between official and private financing. New commitments from official creditors in 2025 carried an average interest rate of 3.6 per cent, an average maturity of about 16 years and a grace period of four years.
Borrowing from private creditors was considerably more costly. Its average interest rate was 8.6 per cent, with a maturity of only three years and a grace period of around one year.
These averages apply to new borrowing commitments made during 2025, not to the full stock of Pakistan’s outstanding external debt. Even so, the World Bank data put external debt at about 34 per cent of gross national income in 2025. The debt also remained more than three times the country’s annual exports, underlining the importance of export earnings and foreign exchange for meeting repayments.
Regional debt ratios and a global surge
The World Bank also recorded a rise in external indebtedness across the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan region. External debt there climbed from about 26.7 per cent of gross national income to 29.4 per cent in 2025, although some debt-service and interest indicators improved. The regional debt stock reached roughly $598.24 billion, up from $565.6 billion a year earlier.
Across low- and middle-income countries, external debt rose 5.5 per cent in 2025 to a record $9.4 trillion, the fastest annual increase since 2021. The World Bank said private financing accounted for much of the growth as developing countries regained access to international capital markets, though borrowing costs stayed elevated, particularly for more vulnerable economies.
For Pakistan, official creditors continue to provide far cheaper and longer-term financing than private lenders. Nevertheless, the overall external debt stock has kept expanding and has nearly doubled over the past decade.
