While total public and private debt hit a record $235 trillion last year, it plummeted when expressed as a percentage of economic output, which rebounded last year after the steep Covid-19 recession of 2020, the fund said Monday in a blog accompanying the latest update of its Global Debt Database.
The economic rebound of 2021 and heat of inflation pushed debt down by more than 10 percentage points of GDP in Brazil, Canada, India and the US — but actual debt fell less, owing to the financing needs of government and the private sector, the fund said. “Managing the high debt levels will become increasingly difficult if the economic outlook continues to deteriorate and borrowings costs rise further,” Vitor Gaspar, Paulo Medas and Roberto Perrelli, senior officials at the IMF’s fiscal affairs department, said in the blog.