New Zealand Government Debt

Indicator note: Debt is the entire stock of direct government fixed-term contractual obligations to others outstanding on a particular date. It includes domestic and foreign liabilities such as currency and money deposits, securities other than shares, and loans. It is the gross amount of government liabilities reduced by the amount of equity and financial derivatives held by the government. Because debt is a stock rather than a flow, it is measured as of a given date, usually the last day of the fiscal year. Central government is the part of general government that includes all administrative departments of the national executive, legislative, and judicial functions, other central agencies and those non-market producers controlled by the central government, whose competence extends normally over the whole economic territory. This indicator is expressed as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is the total income earned through the production of goods and services in an economic territory during an accounting period.

Source organization: Government Finance Statistics Yearbook and data files, International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Metadata fetched: 2026-08-01 01:18:13. Open original metadata response.

Source revisions are retained before the current observation is replaced. This table documents the previous and replacement value for reproducibility.

New Zealand recorded 54,70 percent of GDP in 2025, the latest year available in this series.

Compared with 2024, the government debt increased by 2,71.

Across the latest five-year comparison window, the series shows an upward direction.

Across 41 observations from 1985 to 2025, the average was 40,32; the minimum was 16,30 in 2007 and the maximum was 68,50 in 1986.

New Zealand ranks 101 out of 192 countries with a current value in the portal ranking.

The latest value is above the available average for East Asia & Pacific.

It is also below the available average for the High income group.

Public debt burden and fiscal room.