Bangladesh’s external debt reached $113.44 billion at the end of 2025, equivalent to about $646 per person, according to the World Bank. The outstanding debt stock rose 8.6 percent from a year earlier.
The International Debt Report 2026, released on 5 November, shows that the country’s external liabilities have nearly tripled over the past decade, from $38.77 billion in 2015. The per-capita figure is calculated by dividing total external debt by the population of 175.7 million. It is an average macroeconomic share, not an individual citizen’s personal liability.
The debt stock comprises $89.51 billion in public and publicly guaranteed debt, $9.87 billion in private non-guaranteed debt and $14.06 billion in short-term debt. Within the public and publicly guaranteed category, multilateral creditors hold $51.14 billion, bilateral creditors $32.65 billion and private creditors $5.72 billion.
Among multilateral lenders, the World Bank’s International Development Association accounts for $22.64 billion and the Asian Development Bank for $17.52 billion. Japan is the largest bilateral creditor with $12.72 billion, followed by Russia with $9.02 billion.
External debt stood at 210 percent of exports in 2025, and the debt-to-gross national income (GNI) ratio was 24 percent. Debt service fell relative to both exports and national income, to 16 percent of exports and 2 percent of GNI. Bangladesh Bank data show gross external debt at almost $115 billion as of June 2026.
Bangladesh’s per-capita external debt is above the South Asian average of about $564, calculated from the region’s combined external debt of $955 billion and population of 1.692 billion. It is higher than India’s (about $522) and Nepal’s ($401), but far lower than Sri Lanka’s (about $2,645), Bhutan’s ($4,218) and the Maldives’ (nearly $8,957).
Globally, external debt in low- and middle-income countries rose 5.5 percent to a record $9.4 trillion in 2025, the fastest annual increase since 2021. These countries paid a combined $1.4 trillion in principal and interest, the fifth consecutive annual rise in debt-service payments.
Haishan Fu, chief statistician and director of development data at the World Bank Group, said the return of private lending was welcome, but the countries were borrowing and paying more, and in many cases leaving less for long-term development.
