{"id":11764,"date":"2025-09-26T12:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T12:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/?p=11764"},"modified":"2025-09-26T12:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T12:40:07","slug":"public-debt-hits-70-of-gdp-breaching-legal-cap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/2025\/09\/26\/public-debt-hits-70-of-gdp-breaching-legal-cap\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Debt Hits 70% of GDP, Breaching Legal Cap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pakistan\u2019s debt burden has reached alarming levels, with every citizen now owing Rs 318,252, according to latest estimates by the Economic Policy &amp; Business Development Think Tank.<\/p>\n<p>Figures show that per-person debt has ballooned from Rs 90,047 in 2014 to Rs 318,252 in 2024 \u2014 marking an average annual growth of 13 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The country\u2019s public debt-to-GDP ratio now stands at 70.2 percent, well above the legal ceiling of 60 percent set under the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act, 2005.<\/p>\n<p>In regional comparison, Pakistan is second only to Sri Lanka (96.8 percent), while higher than Thailand (61.1 percent), India (57.1 percent), Indonesia (40.2 percent), and Bangladesh (36.4 percent).<\/p>\n<p>The report highlights multiple red flags: a 71 percent rupee devaluation since 2020, peak interest rates of 22 percent in FY2023-24, and consistent violations of debt sustainability limits.<\/p>\n<p>Experts warn that Pakistan is caught in a \u201cdebt trap,\u201d where high interest rates fuel currency devaluation, which in turn increases the debt burden, perpetuating a vicious cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Economists stress urgent fiscal reforms, export growth, and debt restructuring measures to prevent the situation from escalating into a full-blown crisis similar to Sri Lanka\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pakistan\u2019s debt burden has reached alarming levels, with every citizen now owing Rs 318,252, according to latest estimates by the Economic Policy &amp; Business Development Think Tank. Figures show that per-person debt has ballooned from Rs 90,047 in 2014 to Rs 318,252 in 2024 \u2014 marking an average annual growth of 13 percent. The country\u2019s &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2235],"class_list":["post-11764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-pakistaneconomy-debtcrisis-fiscalreforms-publicdebt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11766,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764\/revisions\/11766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}