Japan Government Debt (% of GDP)
Everything the Japanese government owes, compared with the size of the economy: the highest ratio of any major economy.
204.8%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full Japan economy18 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Updated automatically from official sources.Government Debt (% of GDP)
1980 to 2025
Source: IMF World Economic Outlook (GGXWDG_NGDP) · general government, % of GDP, annual, actual years only. The IMF's figures for the years after the one shown are projections, which this site does not publish, so the year under the figure is the most recent actual available, not a sign the feed has broken.
Japan Government Debt (% of GDP) in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In Japan, the government debt fell by 8.8pp in 2025, from 213.6% in 2024.
It is the lowest reading since 2018.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 204.8% in 2025 to 228.8% in 2020.
Its average since 1980 is 132.4%, and the latest reading is above that.
Japan is 1st of 62 countries in our Government Debt to GDP by Country ranking.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- IMF
- Series
- World
- Frequency
- Annual
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Not applicable, annual data
- Latest observation
- 2025
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
Data refreshed 2026-10-28. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
More Japan indicators
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