Six years on from the pandemic, the question hanging over Asian treasuries is no longer how much they borrowed to get through it, but who has since paid the bill down. On that measure, the region from Tokyo to Malé is splitting into camps, and the dividing line follows neither income levels, credit ratings nor geography.
IMF World Economic Outlook figures held in the IntelliNews statistics archive track gross general government debt as a share of output from 2019 to 2025 for more than a dozen economies across East, Southeast and South Asia. Read together, they describe a region that has broadly grown more leveraged, but one in which momentum now counts for at least as much as the headline ratio.
Fitch Ratings boiled the regional trend down to a single figure in March. By its reckoning, the median Asia-Pacific sovereign owed 37.8% of GDP in 2019; that had climbed to 49.5% by 2025 and is expected to touch 50% this year, while upwards of seven in ten governments it covers still run wider deficits than they did before Covid. The agency cautioned at the time that a long conflict involving Iran would leave governments footing much of the cost of cushioning the blow, with big energy importers most exposed.
Start with those who have room. Taiwan is the outlier of the whole sample: its ratio has shrunk in every single year since 2019, from 32.6% to 23.6%, shedding nine percentage points through a period in which nearly every neighbour was borrowing heavily. Vietnam has travelled in the same direction, if less smoothly, with debt edging up to 41.3% in 2020 before dropping back to 30.5% last year. Both are export-driven economies that profited from the post-pandemic reshuffling of supply chains, and both now enjoy the sort of fiscal headroom that finance ministers elsewhere can only envy.
Indonesia sits just behind them. Its ratio leapt by roughly nine points in 2020 but has barely shifted since, hovering at about 40% for six years, a restraint anchored by the statutory 3% cap on the budget deficit that Jakarta suspended only briefly during the pandemic. Bangladesh and Nepal, at 42.0% and 47.4% respectively, also start from low bases, though the drift is upward: Bangladesh's figure has risen in each of the past six years, and Nepal's is some 13 points higher than in 2019.
Then come the economies where the numbers remain manageable but the trend line is uncomfortable. Thailand stands out for persistence rather than scale. Its ratio has climbed in every year of the series, from 41.1% to 64.7%, without a single pause for consolidation. The Philippines went from 37.0% to 59.1%, adding two and a half points in 2025 after three years of near stability. South Korea, long regarded as one of the region's fiscal conservatives, first crossed 50% in 2023 and reached 52.4% last year. Malaysia owes more than any of them at 70.5%, but has at least held broadly level since 2021.
India occupies a category of its own. Having spiked to 90.4% in 2020, its ratio has sat at around 84–85% for four consecutive years. That is neither a crisis nor a recovery; rather, brisk nominal growth has roughly offset persistent deficits at central and state level. It also leaves New Delhi with less room than its growth story might imply, all the more so because Fitch counts it among the region's large net importers of fossil fuels. Pakistan, perhaps surprisingly, sits lower at 72.8%, having fallen to 70.3% in 2024 under IMF-backed tightening, although the ratio turned higher again last year.
The country whose numbers ought to worry investors most, however, is China. Its gross government debt has risen in every year of the series, from 59.9% in 2019 to 98.6% in 2025, with more than eight points added last year alone. Beijing now carries a heavier load relative to output than India, and that is before counting the borrowing of local government financing vehicles, which the IMF tallies separately in its broader estimates. With falling prices weighing on nominal GDP, the denominator is doing Beijing no favours either.
At the stressed end of the spectrum are three smaller economies that have each been through, or close to, a debt crisis. Laos offers the clearest case of a country climbing out. Its ratio peaked at 115.7% in 2022 and has since dropped to 88.8%, after two years of austerity and a firmer grip on the kip. In November 2025 Vientiane tapped offshore investors again with a $300mn five-year dollar bond listed in Singapore, carrying an 11.25% coupon, and Moody's followed with an upgrade to Caa2. Analysts cited by The Edge Singapore said: "The country’s Singapore bond issuance represents a measured step toward rebalancing its public debt profile." The coupon, though, is a sharp reminder of what market access costs a frontier borrower.
Sri Lanka has taken a comparable route under its IMF programme, bringing debt down from 115.9% in 2022 to 96.8% in 2025. S&P kept the sovereign at CCC+ with a stable outlook in July and expects net government debt of around 92% of GDP this year, easing to roughly 83% by 2029. Even so, the agency sees the deficit widening to about 5% of GDP in 2026 as the state pays for rebuilding after Cyclone Ditwah and for energy support.
The Maldives remains the region's most precarious case. Debt almost doubled to 150.3% of GDP during the pandemic as tourism vanished, eased to 111.6% by 2022, then climbed again to 133.4% in 2024 before slipping to 129.4% last year. New Delhi's July 2025 package, which should shave roughly two-fifths off Malé's yearly debt service, buys time rather than solvency.
Two very high numbers need context. Singapore's ratio of 165.7% looks alarming on paper, but the city state borrows chiefly to deepen its bond market and meet the investment needs of its national savings scheme, and its law forbids spending the proceeds; Fitch singles it out as one of the few jurisdictions still sitting on substantial fiscal reserves. Japan, at 204.8%, remains by far the region's most indebted government, yet its ratio is around 24 points below its 2020 peak, helped by the return of inflation to nominal output.
The broader lesson is that Asia's fiscal hierarchy is being redrawn by direction rather than level. Taipei and Hanoi have used the past five years to rebuild; Beijing, Bangkok and Manila have not. Should energy prices stay elevated, the governments that consolidated early will be the ones choosing their response, while the rest may find it chosen for them.