Pakistan’s total external debt nearly doubled over the past decade, reaching $135.1 billion in 2025, compared with $68.67 billion in 2015, according to the World Bank’s International Debt Report 2026.
The report said the total included $107.08 billion in public and publicly guaranteed debt, while unguaranteed private-sector debt stood at $17.58 billion. Short-term external debt accounted for a further $10.45 billion.
Of Pakistan’s public debt, $56.83 billion was owed to multilateral financial institutions, $42.43 billion to other countries and $7.8 billion to private creditors.
China was Pakistan’s largest individual bilateral creditor, with $22.4 billion in outstanding loans. Pakistan also owed $19.2 billion to the World Bank and $16.83 billion to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The World Bank said loans from official creditors carried an average maturity of 16 years, an average interest rate of 3.6 per cent and a four-year grace period before repayments began.
By comparison, borrowing from private creditors was considerably more expensive, with an average interest rate of 8.6 per cent, a repayment period of three years and a grace period of just one year.
The report also highlighted rising external debt across the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAP) region. Its external debt-to-gross national income (GNI) ratio increased from 26.7 per cent in 2024 to 29.4 per cent in 2025, marking the largest annual increase among the regions covered by the report.
In 2025, China extended the repayment period for approximately $2 billion in loans to Pakistan, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided $2.3 billion in new disbursements under its Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) arrangements.
The figures are part of the World Bank’s International Debt Report 2026, which examines the external debt positions of developing economies up to the end of 2025.