OECD- Global Debt Report 2025 Financing Growth in a Challenging Debt Market Environment

March 20, 2025—Introduction
Global debt markets played a key role in supporting the recoveries from the 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic, continuously providing capital to governments and companies. But their role needs to shift from supporting recovery to financing investment and growth. This will be a challenge. Debt levels are already high and increasingly costly, economic growth is slowing, and geopolitical risks are rising.

The second edition of the Global Debt Report analyses the latest trends in global sovereign and corporate debt markets up to the end of 2024. It also looks at sovereign borrowing in emerging markets and developing economies and assesses how debt markets could help finance the climate transition.

$25 trillion-sovereign and corporate bond borrowing in 2024, nearly three times the 2007 level

$100+ trillion-total sovereign and corporate bond debt worldwide

40%-amount of OECD sovereign and global corporate bond debt maturing by 2027

Both sovereign and corporate borrowing continued to rise in 2024 and are expected to rise further in 2025

Sovereign bond issuance in OECD countries is projected to reach a record USD 17 trillion in 2025, up from USD 14 trillion in 2023. Emerging markets and developing economies' (EMDE) borrowing from debt markets has also grown significantly, from around USD 1 trillion in 2007 to over USD 3 trillion in 2024.

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Source: OECD