IMF Projections Put Five Arab Debt Ratios Above 80 Percent in 2026
Five Arab economies are projected to carry general government gross debt above 80 percent of gross domestic product in 2026, according to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook database published in April 2026. Sudan and Bahrain lead the ranking, followed by Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan. Together the five are projected to owe the equivalent of roughly 628 billion dollars in 2026 against combined output of 649 billion dollars.
The five are not a single story. Sudan’s ratio is falling steeply from an extraordinary base, Bahrain’s is still rising although its deficit is narrowing, Egypt’s is broadly flat while carrying by far the largest absolute stock, Tunisia’s shows the fastest two-year deterioration, and Jordan’s is the steadiest of the five. The direction of travel matters more than the ranking, because it determines which of the five is converging and which is not.
Coverage note. The Fund publishes a 2026 gross-debt projection for 16 Arab economies. It publishes none for Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen or the West Bank and Gaza, and none for Lebanon, whose 2025 estimate stands at 139.4 percent of GDP. Any ranking of Arab debt burdens therefore covers only the economies for which the Fund has a current projection.
The 2026 ranking
| Country | Debt 2025 | Debt 2026 | Debt 2027 | Fiscal balance 2026 | GDP 2026 | Implied debt stock 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sudan | 187.6 | 169.1 | 153.0 | −4.4 | 44.7 | 75.6 |
| Bahrain | 147.6 | 152.4 | 154.5 | −10.6 | 48.8 | 74.4 |
| Egypt | 86.8 | 87.0 | 84.9 | −12.1 | 429.6 | 373.8 |
| Tunisia | 81.3 | 84.9 | 88.7 | −7.4 | 60.7 | 51.6 |
| Jordan | 82.8 | 81.8 | 81.1 | −5.4 | 64.9 | 53.1 |
Debt and fiscal balance are general government gross debt and general government net lending and borrowing, both as a percent of gross domestic product. GDP is at current prices in billions of US dollars. The implied debt stock in billions of dollars is derived by applying each debt ratio to the same database’s dollar GDP projection; it is a calculation from the Fund’s published series, not a figure the Fund itself publishes, and it carries exchange-rate and rounding effects.
Below the five, the Fund projects Morocco at 65.8 percent of GDP in 2026, Iraq at 61.7 percent, Algeria at 59.2 percent, Qatar at 43.3 percent and Mauritania at 37.1 percent, completing the top ten.
Sudan: a falling ratio is not the same as falling debt
Sudan carries the highest projected ratio in the Arab world at 169.1 percent of GDP in 2026, and also the steepest decline. The series runs 261.2 percent in 2023, 262.6 percent in 2024, 187.6 percent in 2025, then 169.1 percent in 2026 and 153.0 percent in 2027 — a fall of 92.1 percentage points between 2023 and 2026, and a further 16.1 points the year after.
That decline should not be read as repayment. The Fund projects Sudan’s general government deficit widening over the same period, from 3.1 percent of GDP in 2025 to 4.4 percent in 2026 and 5.0 percent in 2027, so the government is still adding to the stock. The ratio falls because the denominator moves faster than the numerator, with nominal output expanding sharply against a base compressed by earlier disruption. Real growth is projected at only 0.7 percent in 2026 before an 8.1 percent rebound in 2027, which means price effects rather than volume account for much of the nominal expansion. Valuation changes and other stock-flow adjustments can move a gross-debt ratio independently of the deficit, and in a case like Sudan’s they are likely to be material.
On the Fund’s own figures the implied 2026 dollar stock is about 75.6 billion dollars — the second-largest of the five in absolute terms, marginally above Bahrain’s, despite Sudan having the smallest economy in the group. The comparison with Egypt sets out the distinction plainly: Sudan’s ratio is roughly twice Egypt’s, but its implied stock is about a fifth the size. A ratio measures a stock against a flow, and when the flow has been severely compressed the ratio overstates the size of the obligation relative to peers without making it any easier to service, because the revenue base is compressed by the same factor.
Bahrain: consolidation under way, ratio not yet turned
Bahrain is projected at 152.4 percent of GDP in 2026, second in the ranking and the highest in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Its ratio has risen in every recent year of the Fund’s series: 123.0 percent in 2023, 133.7 percent in 2024, 147.6 percent in 2025, then 152.4 percent in 2026 and 154.5 percent in 2027, a cumulative increase of 29.4 percentage points from 2023 to 2026.
The offsetting movement is on the flow side and it is clear. Bahrain’s general government deficit is projected to narrow from 13.0 percent of GDP in 2025 to 10.6 percent in 2026 and 9.1 percent in 2027 — a consolidation of 3.9 percentage points across two years, the largest deficit reduction of any country in this group, and one of only two in the five where the deficit narrows in both projection years. Bahrain is the clearest case in the group of consolidation that has begun but has not yet caught up with the accumulated stock: the deficit is shrinking, and the rate of increase in the ratio is shrinking with it, from 4.8 points in 2026 to 2.1 points in 2027.
Real output is projected to contract 0.5 percent in 2026 before recovering to 4.5 percent growth in 2027, which is part of why the increase slows so markedly in the second year. The implied dollar stock is about 74.4 billion dollars against projected GDP of 48.8 billion, the smallest economy of the five by output and therefore the ratio most sensitive to a single year of nominal growth or of financing need.
Egypt: the largest stock by a wide margin
Egypt is projected at 87.0 percent of GDP in 2026, essentially unchanged from 86.8 percent in 2025, easing to 84.9 percent in 2027 and down 8.9 percentage points from 95.9 percent in 2023.
On absolute size Egypt is in a category of its own. Its implied 2026 stock of about 373.8 billion dollars is close to 60 percent of the five countries’ combined obligation, and roughly 119 billion dollars larger than the other four put together. That reflects the scale of the economy rather than the intensity of the borrowing: projected 2026 GDP of 429.6 billion dollars is about 9.6 times Sudan’s and 7.1 times Tunisia’s.
The tension in Egypt’s numbers is between the stock and the flow. The Fund projects the widest deficit of the five in 2026 at 12.1 percent of GDP, up from 6.6 percent in 2025, before narrowing to 8.9 percent in 2027. That the ratio nonetheless stays flat implies that nominal output growth is absorbing most of the new borrowing. Real output is projected to expand 4.2 percent in 2026 and 4.8 percent in 2027, the strongest sustained pace in the group. Holding a ratio flat through nominal expansion while the deficit widens is a different proposition from holding it flat through consolidation, and it leaves the path more exposed to a growth disappointment, to higher financing costs, or to exchange-rate movement.
Tunisia: the largest two-year increase
Tunisia is projected at 84.9 percent of GDP in 2026, up from 81.3 percent in 2025, and rising again to 88.7 percent in 2027. Bahrain’s ratio also rises in both projection years, but Tunisia’s two-year increase of 7.4 percentage points on the published figures exceeds Bahrain’s 6.9 points, and Tunisia is the only one of the five where the increase accelerates rather than slows in the second year.
Two forces push the same way. The deficit widens from 5.2 percent of GDP in 2025 to 7.4 percent in 2026 before easing to 6.5 percent in 2027, and growth decelerates across the whole window, from 2.5 percent in 2025 to 2.1 percent in 2026 and 1.6 percent in 2027. The implied 2026 stock is about 51.6 billion dollars, the smallest of the five, but the direction of travel is the least favourable in the group. A deficit above 6 percent of GDP is manageable against strong nominal growth; against the Fund’s projected growth path it is not, and Tunisia shows the least visible stabilising force of the five.
Jordan: the steadiest of the five
Jordan is projected at 81.8 percent of GDP in 2026, down from 82.8 percent in 2025 and easing further to 81.1 percent in 2027. Across the full 2023 to 2027 span the series moves within a band of 81.0 to 82.8 percent — a range of 1.8 percentage points, against 108.2 points of movement in Sudan and 31.5 points in Bahrain over the same window.
The stability is earned on the flow side. Jordan’s deficit narrows from 6.3 percent of GDP in 2025 to 5.4 percent in 2026 and 5.3 percent in 2027 — the second-narrowest deficit of the five in 2026 after Sudan’s 4.4 percent, and, with Bahrain, one of only two that narrow in both projection years. Real growth of 2.7 percent in 2026 and 3.1 percent in 2027 is enough to hold the ratio down against a deficit of that size. The implied 2026 stock is about 53.1 billion dollars on GDP of 64.9 billion.
Jordan illustrates that a high ratio and an unstable one are separate conditions. At 81.8 percent it clears the 80 percent threshold that defines this ranking, but it is the only one of the five where the ratio falls, the deficit narrows and growth strengthens across both projection years at once.
The Gulf comparison
The contrast with the Gulf Cooperation Council is wide. On the same April 2026 database Kuwait is projected at 22.3 percent of GDP in 2026, the United Arab Emirates at 31.4 percent, Saudi Arabia at 32.1 percent, Oman at 32.7 percent and Qatar at 43.3 percent. The unweighted average of those five is 32.4 percent, under 40 percent of Jordan’s ratio, which is the lowest of the five economies above the threshold.
Kuwait has the lowest projected 2026 ratio of any Arab economy in the database; Sudan’s is about 7.6 times it and Bahrain’s about 6.8 times. Oman is on a declining path, projected at 32.7 percent in 2026 against 37.4 percent in 2023, and flat again in 2027. The UAE also declines, from 34.3 percent in 2025 to 31.4 percent in 2026 and 30.1 percent in 2027. Qatar, at 43.3 percent in 2026, eases to 40.9 percent in 2027 and is the only Gulf state other than Bahrain in the Arab top ten, in ninth place.
The Gulf position reflects more than the ratios themselves. Gross debt measures exclude sovereign assets, which is a material omission when comparing states with large public investment and reserve portfolios against those with limited financial buffers. Gulf balance sheets on a net basis sit further from the high-debt group than these gross figures alone convey.
What the numbers do and do not show
General government gross debt is not external debt. It includes obligations to domestic banks, pension funds and local investors alongside liabilities held abroad, so a high ratio says nothing on its own about currency composition, maturity profile, interest burden or refinancing risk. Nor are gross-debt ratios fully comparable across countries: differences in which government entities and which financial instruments are captured can move a national figure materially, and the Fund itself cautions on that point.
Debt dynamics are also not reducible to the deficit. The change in a gross-debt ratio depends on the primary balance, the gap between the effective interest rate and nominal growth, exchange-rate movement on foreign-currency liabilities, and stock-flow adjustments that fall outside the deficit altogether. The ratio itself is constructed in domestic-currency terms; the dollar GDP series used here is appropriate for estimating an illustrative dollar stock, not for explaining why a ratio moved.
Why it matters
Debt ratios at these levels shape both the cost and the availability of sovereign funding. For issuers with market access the ratio is one input into spread; for those without it, the ratio shapes the terms of official support. Four of the five — Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan — face rollover schedules priced in part off the direction of these series, not merely their level.
Direction is what separates them. Bahrain’s ratio rises while its deficit narrows by 3.9 points across two years. Egypt’s ratio is flat while its deficit widens by 5.5 points in a single year, with nominal growth doing the work fiscal policy is not. Tunisia’s ratio rises while growth decelerates in both projection years, the only combination in the group with no visible stabiliser. Jordan’s ratio falls, its deficit narrows and its growth holds.
For the Gulf the relevance is regional rather than domestic. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman and Qatar all sit far below the threshold and their sovereign issuance is priced in a different band. But Gulf trade, labour flows and direct investment exposure to Egypt and Jordan in particular mean the fiscal trajectory of those two economies is not external to the Gulf outlook.
What to watch
The Fund publishes the full World Economic Outlook database twice a year, in April and October. The October 2026 edition is the next comprehensive revision of every series used here, and the accompanying Fiscal Monitor is where the Fund sets out its reading of the underlying policy settings.
Three items would move the ranking. Whether Egypt’s 2026 deficit lands near the projected 12.1 percent of GDP or closer to the 8.9 percent expected for 2027 decides whether the flat ratio holds. Whether Tunisia’s growth keeps decelerating while the deficit stays above 6 percent of GDP decides whether the climb toward 88.7 percent reverses. And whether Bahrain’s deficit keeps narrowing along the 13.0, 10.6, 9.1 percent path determines when the consolidation becomes sufficient to turn the ratio over after 2027.
Sudan carries the widest forecast uncertainty in both directions. A ratio driven principally by its denominator is highly sensitive to any revision in the output estimate, and a 2027 real growth projection of 8.1 percent following 0.7 percent the year before is a large step on which a 16.1-point ratio decline substantially rests.
Sources
International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook database, April 2026 edition — general government gross debt, general government net lending and borrowing, gross domestic product at current prices in US dollars, and real GDP growth. Dollar debt stocks, country shares and percentage-point changes are calculations by The Edge from those published series.
