Reporting snapshot · 7 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The figures are annual stock data for the end of 2025 and do not capture borrowing or repayments during 2026. The World Bank's totals use its own debtor-reporting definitions, so they are not directly comparable with the government's narrower central-debt series.
What the report shows
Pakistan’s total external debt reached $135.1 billion at the end of 2025, nearly double its level a decade earlier, according to the World Bank’s International Debt Report 2026, released on 5 November. The Express Tribune reported the Pakistan figures on 7 November, and Profit published a detailed breakdown the previous day.
The stock rose about 4 per cent from $129.9 billion a year earlier and from $68.7 billion in 2015, an increase of roughly $66.4 billion over the decade.
The total is made up of three components. Public and publicly guaranteed debt, which includes obligations of government and state-owned entities as well as IMF credit and special drawing rights, accounted for $107.08 billion. Private non-guaranteed debt was $17.58 billion, and short-term debt was $10.45 billion. Public and publicly guaranteed borrowing therefore represented about 79 per cent of the total.
That $135.1 billion is a wider measure than the “central government external debt” published by the State Bank of Pakistan, which stood at $82.7 billion in December 2025, as KhabarWire reported at the time. The central-bank series covers the federal government’s own external liabilities; the World Bank total also includes publicly guaranteed debt of other public bodies, private borrowing that carries no public guarantee, and short-term obligations.
Who Pakistan owes
Multilateral creditors held $56.83 billion of Pakistan’s public and publicly guaranteed debt. The World Bank’s International Development Association accounted for $19.21 billion and the Asian Development Bank for $16.83 billion, with the remaining $20.79 billion owed to other multilateral institutions.
Bilateral creditors held $42.44 billion. China was the largest single lender, with $22.42 billion outstanding, or about 53 per cent of the bilateral total. The World Bank’s country tables also list $8.17 billion owed to multiple bilateral lenders and $11.85 billion to other bilateral creditors. Private creditors held $7.81 billion of the guaranteed debt.
The report records two refinancing moves in 2025. China extended the repayment period on $2 billion of its loans, and the IMF provided $2.3 billion in new financing under the Extended Fund Facility and the Resilience and Sustainability Facility. The IMF disbursements are separate from the rollovers and deposits that make up the government’s short-term external financing, including the recent extension of a $3 billion Saudi deposit.
The terms are shifting
The report also details not only how much Pakistan owes but on what terms new borrowing is being made. New commitments from official creditors in 2025 carried an average interest rate of 3.6 per cent, an average maturity of 16 years and a grace period of four years, Profit reported, citing the country tables. New commitments from private creditors carried an average rate of 8.6 per cent, a maturity of three years and a grace period of one year.
Those figures describe new commitments made during 2025, not the cost of the entire outstanding stock. Even so, they show why the composition of borrowing matters. A larger share of short-maturity, higher-cost private debt can raise refinancing pressure even when the headline stock grows slowly. Pakistan’s total rose about 4 per cent in 2025, a slower pace than the 5.5 per cent increase recorded across all low- and middle-income countries.
The World Bank’s global release put developing countries’ external debt at a record $9.4 trillion in 2025, the fastest annual increase since 2021. It said debt-service payments by those countries reached $1.4 trillion, the fifth consecutive annual rise, and that between 2022 and 2025 they paid about $436 billion more in debt service than they received in new financing. The World Bank said more than a quarter of the $303 billion increase in public and publicly guaranteed debt reflected the weaker US dollar, which raised the dollar value of liabilities denominated in other currencies; Profit put the share at 28.2 per cent.
How heavy is the burden?
The World Bank compares the stock with the size of the economy and with export earnings. Pakistan’s external debt was equivalent to 34 per cent of gross national income in 2025, down 5.3 per cent on the report’s comparative measure. Gross national income was about $398.21 billion, with a population of 255.2 million.
The export ratios point the other way. External debt stood at 324 per cent of exports, up 3 per cent, meaning the stock was more than three times the value of a year’s exports. Debt service absorbed 33 per cent of export earnings, although that ratio was 16.1 per cent lower than in the previous year. Debt service was equivalent to 3 per cent of gross national income, down 22.9 per cent.
Read together, the ratios suggest that Pakistan’s external debt is large relative to its export base even as the debt-to-GNI ratio has edged lower. A fall in the debt-to-GNI ratio can reflect faster nominal growth or exchange-rate effects as well as repayment; it does not by itself show that repayment has become easier. The debt-service-to-exports ratio is the more direct measure of how much foreign-currency earnings are committed to servicing the stock.
What it means for Pakistan
The report is a stocktake, not a forecast. It shows that Pakistan’s external liabilities have roughly doubled in a decade and that multilateral and Chinese official creditors still hold most of the guaranteed debt. It also shows that the government has continued to rely on official financing and rollovers, while private creditors are charging much more than official lenders for new money.
The practical question is what happens to the refinancing schedule. The finance secretary told a Senate committee this month that Pakistan faces about $21.5 billion of external financing requirements in the current fiscal year, including $17.5 billion of principal repayments, as KhabarWire reported after the briefing. The plan assumes that $10.5 billion will be rolled over by bilateral and commercial creditors, leaving net principal and interest payments of $11 billion. The World Bank data do not settle whether those projections will hold; they provide the starting point against which the year’s borrowing will be measured.
What is still uncertain
The report covers the end of 2025 and does not show how the stock has moved during 2026. It also does not provide a full maturity-by-maturity schedule for Pakistan’s obligations, so the timing of repayments is not clear from the headline figures. The World Bank’s definitions differ from those used by the State Bank and the Finance Ministry, and the report’s country tables may be revised.
The dollar value of the stock can also change with exchange rates even when the underlying borrowing is unchanged, which makes comparisons across years sensitive to valuation effects. How quickly Pakistan’s external debt grows in 2026, and on what terms new borrowing is secured, will depend on the pace of official financing, the government’s rollover arrangements and the strength of export earnings.
