For all regional, income, and individual country tables, data definitions are presented below or footnoted where appropriate. Data definitions for other summary tables are, likewise, consistent with those below.

1. Summary debt data summarizes the stocks and flows of the major components of the external debt of the country. TOTAL DEBT STOCKS (EDT) consist of public and publicly guaranteed long-term debt, private nonguaranteed long-term debt, the use of IMF credit, and short-term debt. Interest in arrears on long-term debt and the use of IMF credit are added to the short-term debt and are shown as separate lines. Arrears of principal and of interest have been disaggregated to show the arrears owed to official creditors and the arrears owed to private creditors. Principal in arrears on long-term debt are shown as memorandum items. The relation between total debt stock and its components is illustrated on page xxiv.

Long-term external debt is defined as debt that has an original or extended maturity of more than one year and that is owed to nonresidents and repayable in foreign currency, goods, or services.

Long-term debt has three components:

• Public debt, which is an external obligation of a public debtor, including the national government, a political subdivision (or an agency of either), and autonomous public bodies.

• Publicly guaranteed debt, which is an external obligation of a private debtor that is guaranteed for repayment by a public entity.

• Private nonguaranteed external debt, which is an external obligation of a private debtor that is not guaranteed for repayment by a public entity.

Short-term external debt is defined as debt that has an original maturity of one year or less. Available data permit no distinction between public and private nonguaranteed short-term debt.

Interest in arrears on long-term debt is defined as interest payment due but not paid, on a cumulative basis. Interest arrears are regarded as short term debt. Thus, an increase in interest arrears will not be recorded as increase in total long-term debt outstanding and disbursed (LDOD). On the other hand, a clearing of interest arrears as payments of interest arrears will be allocated to the relevant flows, being  long- term, or short-term debt, depending on toward which flow the interest payments took place. It will be recorded as (1) a reduction of short term debt (Section 1); (2) a net change in interest arrears

(Section 8). Similarly, the reduction of interest arrears  through interest arrears restructured and interest arrears forgiven  will also be recorded as a reduction of short-term debt (section 1) and as net change in interest arrears (section 8). In addition, interest arrears restructuring and interest restructuring will be recorded as interest capitalization (section 8).

Principal in arrears on long-term debt is defined as principal repayment due but not paid, on a cumulative basis.

Use of IMF credit denotes repurchase obligations to the IMF with respect to all uses of IMF resources (excluding those resulting from drawings in the reserve tranche) shown for the end of the year specified. Use of IMF credit comprises purchases outstanding under the credit tranches, including enlarged access resources and all special facilities, trust fund loans, and poverty reduction and growth facility (PRGF) and structural adjustment facility (SAF).

• IMF purchases are total drawings on the general resources account of the IMF during the year specified, excluding drawings in the reserve tranche.

• IMF repurchases are total repayments of outstanding drawings from the general resources account during the year specified, excluding repayments due in the reserve tranche.

TOTAL DEBT FLOWS are consolidated data on disbursements, principal repayments, and interest payments for total long-term debt and transactions with the IMF and short-term debt.

Disbursements are drawings on loan commitments during the year specified.

Principal repayments are the amounts of principal (amortization) paid in foreign currency, goods, or services in the year specified.

Net flows on debt are disbursements on long-term debt and IMF purchases minus principal repayments on long-term debt and IMF repurchases up to 1984. Beginning in 1985 this line includes the change in stock of short-term debt (excluding interest arrears for long-term debt). Thus if the change in stock is positive, a disbursement is assumed to have taken place; if negative, a repayment is assumed to have taken place.

Interest payments are the amounts of interest paid in foreign currency, goods, or services in the year specified.

Net transfers on debt are net flows minus interest payments (or disbursements minus total debt service payments).

Total debt service paid (TDS) is debt service payments on total long-term debt (public and publicly guaranteed and private nonguaranteed), use of IMF credit, and interest on short-term debt.

Debt forgiveness grants are both debts cancelled by agreement between debtor and creditor and reductions in the net present value of non-official development assistance debt from concessional rescheduling or refinancing. Data are on a disbursement basis and cover flows from all bilateral and multilateral donors.

Portfolio equity flows are the sum of country funds, depository receipts (American or global), and direct purchases of shares by foreign investors.

Grants are defined as legally binding commitments that obligate a specific value of funds available for disbursement for which there is no repayment requirement.

Interest on long-term debt excludes IMF charges.

International Development Association (IDA)grants are net disbursements of grants from IDA.

The memorandum item technical cooperation grants includes free-standing technical cooperation grants, which are intended to finance the transfer of technical and managerial skills or of technology for the purpose of building up general national capacity without reference to any specific investment projects; and investment-related technical cooperation grants, which are provided to strengthen the capacity to execute specific investment projects.

Profit remittances on foreign direct investment covers payments of direct investment income (debit side), which consist of income on equity (dividends, branch profits, and reinvested earnings) and income on the intercompany debt (interest).

3. Major economic aggregates provides data series for major economic aggregates. The five economic aggregates for the reporting economies are prepared for the convenience of users; the usual caution should be exercised in using them for economic analysis.

Gross national income, or GNI (Gross national product, or GNP, in previous editions) is the sum of value added by all resident producers plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output plus net receipts of primary income (compensation of employees and property income) from abroad and uses yearly average exchange rates in converting GNI from local currency into U.S. dollars.

Exports of goods, services and income (XGS) comprise the total value of goods and services exported, and receipts of compensation of

employees, and investment income. Workers’ remittances, a transfer and not an income entry in the balance of payments, are treated as compensation of employees in Global Development Finance because they are often difficult to distinguish from compensation of nonresident workers and migrants.

Workers’ remittances and compensation of employees comprise current transfers by migrant workers, wages and salaries earned by nonresident workers. In addition, migrants’ transfers, a part of capital transfers, are treated as workers’ remittances in Global Development Finance. See GDF volume 1 for more details.

Imports of goods and services (MGS) are the total value of goods and services imported and income paid.

International reserves (RES) are the sum of a country’s monetary authority’s holdings of special drawing rights (SDRs), its reserve position in the IMF, its holdings of foreign exchange, and its holdings of gold (valued at year-end London prices).

Current account balance is the sum of the credits less the debits arising from international transactions in goods, services, income, and current transfers. It represents the transactions that add to or subtract from an economy’s stock of foreign financial items.

4. Debt indicators

The macroeconomic aggregates and debt data provided in the tables are used to generate ratios that analysts use to assess the external situations of developing countries. Different analysts give different weights to these indicators, but no single indicator or set of indicators can substitute for a thorough analysis of the overall situation of an economy. The advantage of the indicators in Global Development Finance is that they are calculated from standardized data series that are compiled on a consistent basis by the World Bank and the IMF. The ratios offer various measures of the cost of, or capacity for, servicing debt in terms of the foreign exchange or output forgone. The following ratios are provided based on total external debt:

EDT/XGS is total external debt to exports of goods and services (including workers’ remittances).

EDT/GNI is total external debt to gross national income.

TDS/XGS, also called the debt service ratio, is total debt service to exports of goods and services (including workers’ remittances).

INT/XGS, also called the interest service ratio, is total interest payments to exports of goods and services (including workers’ remittances).

INT/GNI is total interest payments to gross national income.

RES/EDT is international reserves to total external debt.

RES/MGS is international reserves to imports of goods and services.

Short-term/EDT is short-term debt to total external debt.

Concessional/EDT is concessional debt to total external debt.

Multilateral/EDT is multilateral debt to total external debt.

5. Long-term debt provides detailed information on stocks and flows of long-term debt and its various components. Data on bonds issued by private entities without public guarantee, compiled for major borrowers, are included in private nonguaranteed debt. IBRD loans and IDA credits are shown as memorandum items.

Data on long-term debt include eight main elements, not all of which have been provided in the GDF print:

DEBT OUTSTANDING AND DISBURSED is the total outstanding debt at year end.

DISBURSEMENTS are drawings on loan commitments by the borrower during the year.

PRINCIPAL REPAYMENTS are amounts paid by the borrower during the year.

NET FLOWS received by the borrower during the year are disbursements minus principal repayments.

INTEREST PAYMENTS are amounts paid by the borrower during the year.

NET TRANSFERS are net flows minus interest payments during the year; negative transfers show net transfers made by the borrower to the creditor during the year.

DEBT SERVICE (LTDS) is the sum of principal repayments and interest payments actually made.

UNDISBURSED DEBT is total debt undrawn at year end; data for private nonguaranteed debt are not available.

Data are aggregated by type of creditor. Official creditors includes multilateral and bilateral debt.

• Loans from multilateral organizations are loans and credits from the World Bank, regional development banks, and other multilateral and intergovernmental agencies. Excluded are loans from funds administered by an international organization on behalf of a single donor government; these are classified as loans from governments.

• Bilateral loans are loans from governments and their agencies (including central banks), loans from autonomous bodies, and direct loans from official export credit agencies.

Private creditors include bonds, commercial banks, and other private creditors. Other private creditors comprise trade-related lending.

• Bonds include publicly issued or privately placed bonds.

• Commercial banks are loans from private banks and other private financial institutions.

• Other private includes credits from manufacturers, exporters, and other suppliers of goods, and bank credits covered by a guarantee of an export credit agency.

Four characteristics of a country’s debt are given as memorandum items for long-term debt outstanding and disbursed (LDOD) in the electronic database.

Concessional LDOD conveys information about the borrower’s receipt of aid from official lenders at concessional terms as defined by the DAC, that is, loans with an original grant element of 25 percent or more. Loans from major regional development banks — African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank — and from the World Bank are classified as concessional according to each institution’s classification and not according to the DAC definition, as was the practice in earlier reports.

Variable interest rate LDOD is long-term debt with interest rates that float with movements in a key market rate such as the London interbank offer rate (LIBOR) or the U.S. prime rate. This item conveys information about the borrower’s exposure to changes in international interest rates.

Public sector LDOD and private sector LDOD convey information about the distribution of long-term debt for DRS countries by type of debtor (central government, state and local government, central bank, public and mixed enterprises, official development banks, private banks, and private entities).

6. Currency composition of public and publicly guaranteed debt provides information on the currency composition of loans outstanding and disbursed based on repayment currency of individual loans. For major multilateral creditors, currency composition is based on reporting currency, which is mostly US$ and Unit of Account. The major currencies in which the external debt of low- and middle-income countries is contracted are separately identified, as is debt denominated in special drawing rights and debt repayable in multiple currencies.

Beginning in 2001, debt denominated in the currencies of the 15 members in the euro area is included under the euro.

7. Debt restructuringsprovides information on restructurings of long-term debt starting in 1985. Debt restructurings include restructurings in the context of the Paris Club, commercial banks, debt-equity swaps, buybacks, and bond exchanges. In the event of a swap of long term debt (debt-to-equity, debt-for-nature, or debt-for-development), the face value of the debt swapped will be recorded as a decline in the long term debt stock, but the operation will not be recorded as a principal repayment. For example, if a country swaps debt of face value D against equity, then LDOD will decline by D and a principal repayment will not be reported.

Debt restructuring data capture the non-cash or inferred flows associated with rescheduling and restructuring. These are presented to complement the cash-basis transactions recorded in the main body of the data, which show both the stock and flows rescheduled each year. In addition, the amount of debt forgiven (interest forgiven is shown as a memorandum item) and the amount of debt stock reduction (including debt buyback) are also shown separately.

Total amount rescheduled is the total amount of debt rescheduled, which includes the debt stock, principal, interest, charges and penalties rescheduled.

Debt stock rescheduled is the amount of debt outstanding rescheduled in any given year.

Principal rescheduled is the amount of principal due or in arrears that was rescheduled in any given year.

Interest rescheduled is the amount of interest due or in arrears that was rescheduled in any given year.

Debt forgiven is the amount of principal due or in arrears that was written off or forgiven in any given year. It includes debt forgiven within and outside Paris club agreements, principal forgiven and principal arrears forgiven, and excludes interest forgiven. Interest arrears forgiven and future interest

obligations forgiven are recorded as a memo item under interest forgiven (section 7).

Interest forgiven is the amount of interest due or in arrears that was written off or forgiven in any given year.

Debt stock reduction is the amount that has been netted out of the stock of debt using debt conversion schemes such as buybacks and equity swaps or the discounted value of long-term bonds that were issued in exchange for outstanding debt. It includes the effect of any financial operation that will reduce the debt stock other than debt stock restructuring, repayment of principal and debt forgiven (which is recorded separately in section 7). In particular, “debt stock reduction” will include the face value of debt bought back, the face value of debt swapped for equity (or “nature” or “development”), any face value reduction that might result as the consequence of a bond exchange, and any face value reduction resulting from an exchange of debt for discount bonds.

Debt buyback is the repurchase by a debtor of its own debt, discounted or at par. In the event of a buyback of long-term debt, the face value of the debt bought back will be recorded as a decline in the long-term debt stock, and the cash amount received by creditors will be recorded as a principal repayment in Section 5. For example, if a country buys back long-term debt of face value B at a price p, then LDOD will decline by B, and principal repayment will go up by p*B. The difference between the secondary market price at which the debt was bought back and the face value is recorded as a debt stock write off (Section 8). Both debt buyback and debt stock write off are included in the debt stock reduction (Section 7).

8. Debt stock-flow reconciliation reconciles the stock and flow data on total external debt for each year, beginning with 1989. This section is designed to illustrate the changes in stock that have taken place due to five factors: the net flow on debt, the net change in interest arrears, the capitalization of interest, the reduction in debt resulting from debt forgiveness or other debt reduction mechanisms, and the cross currency valuation effects. The residual difference — the change in stock not explained by any of the factors identified above — is also presented. The residual is calculated as the sum of identified accounts minus the change in stock. Where the residual is large it can, in some cases, serve as an illustration of the inconsistencies in the reported data. More often, however, it can be explained by specific borrowing phenomena in individual countries. These are explained in the Country Notes section. Not all components are provided in the GDF print.

Total change in debt stock is the variation in the total debt stock between two consecutive years.

Net flows on debt are disbursements on long-term debt and IMF purchases minus principal repayments, IMF repurchases and change in the stock of the short-term debt

Net change in interest arrears is the variation in the total amount of interest in arrears between two consecutive years.

Interest capitalized is the interest that became part of the stock of debt due to a rescheduling operation.

Debt forgiveness or reduction, is the debt stock, principal and/or interest that will not be paid .

Cross-currency valuation effect arises from movements in the value of the dollar against other world currencies, as well as debt forgiveness or reduction, and effect the value of developing-country  debt. Countries contract debt in various currencies. The debt data that countries report to the World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System is expressed in the currencies in which the original debt was contracted  or in currencies in which it is repayable. For purposes of standardization and aggregation, the DRS converts these amounts into dollar values. The exchange rates used are generally the par values or central rates specified by the International Monetary Fund or market rates when necessary. Exchange rates in effect at the end of any given year are used to convert the stock of debt outstanding for that year in various currencies into the nominal dollar value.

Residual is the change in the total debt stock that is not justified by the operations listed in this section.

9. Average terms of new commitments provides information on the average-terms of new commitments on public and publicly guaranteed debt and information on the level of commitments from official and private sources. To obtain averages, the interest rates, maturities, and grace periods in each category have been weighted by the amounts of the loans.

The grant equivalent of a loan is its commitment (present) value, less the discounted present value of its contractual debt service; conventionally, future service payments are discounted at 10 percent. Net Present Value (NPV) of debt – the nominal amount outstanding minus the sum of all future debt-service obligations (interest and principal) on existing debt discounted at an interest rate different from the contracted rate.

The grant element of a loan is the grant equivalent expressed as a percentage of the amount committed. It is used as a measure of the overall cost of borrowing. Loans with an original grant element of 25 percent or more are defined as concessional. The average grant element has been weighted by the amounts of the loans. Commitments cover the total amount of loans for which contracts were signed in the year specified; data for private nonguaranteed debt are not available.

Grace period – the grace period for principal is the period from the date of signature of the loan or the issue of the financial instrument to the first repayment of principal.  The repayment period is the period from the first to last repayment of principal.

Maturity is the number of years to original maturity date, which is the sum of grace and  repayment periods.

10. Projections on existing pipeline provides anticipated disbursements and contractual obligations on long-term debt contracted up to December 2006.

Projected debt service payments are estimates of payments due on existing debt outstanding, including undisbursed. They do not include service payments that may become due as a result of new loans contracted in subsequent years. Nor do they allow for effects on service payments of changes in repayment patterns owing to prepayment of loans or to rescheduling or refinancing, including repayment

of outstanding arrears, that occurred after the last year of reported data.

Projected disbursements are estimates of drawings of unutilized balances. The projections do not take into account future borrowing by the debtor country. (See the Methodology section for a detailed explanation of how undisbursed balances are projected.)

The principal sources of information for the tables in this volume are reports to the World Bank through the DRS from member countries that have received either IBRD loans or IDA credits. Additional information has been drawn from the files of the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Central Bank for Economic Integration, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). (The IBRD and IDA are components of the World Bank.) and the International Monetary Fund )(IMF).

Reporting countries submit detailed (loan-by-loan) reports through the DRS on the annual status, transactions, and terms of the long-term external debt of public agencies and that of private ones guaranteed by a public agency in the debtor country. This information forms the basis for the tables in this volume.

Aggregate data on private debt without public guarantee are compiled and published as reliable reported and estimated information becomes available. This edition includes data on private nonguaranteed debt, either as reported or as estimated, for countries, when available.

The short-term debt data are as reported by the debtor countries or are estimates. The principal creditor sources are the semiannual series of commercial banks’ claims on developing countries, published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). For some countries, estimates were prepared by pooling creditor and debtor information.

Data on long-term debt reported by member countries are checked against, and supplemented by, data from several other sources. Among these are the statements and reports of several regional development banks, government lending agencies and official government websites.

Data on exports and imports (on a balance of payments basis), international reserves, and current account balances are drawn mainly from the files of the IMF, supplemented by World Bank staff estimates. Balance of payments data are presented according to the fifth edition of the IMF’s Balance of Payments Manual, which made several adjustments to its presentation of trade statistics. Coverage of goods was expanded to include in imports the value of goods received for processing and repair (on a gross basis). Their subsequent re-export is recorded in exports (also on a gross basis). This approach will cause a country’s imports and exports to increase without affecting the balance of goods. In addition, all capital transfers, which were included with current transfers in the fourth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual, are now shown in a separate capital (as opposed to financial) account, and so do not contribute to the current account balance.

Gross national income (GNI) data for most developing countries are collected from national statistical organizations and central banks by visiting and resident World Bank missions. Data on GNI are from the Macroeconomic Data Team of the Development Economics Development Data Group of the World Bank.

Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the debt statistics. Nevertheless, quality and coverage vary among debtors and may also vary for the same debtor from year to year. Coverage has been improved through the efforts of the reporting agencies and the work of World Bank missions, which visit member countries to gather data and to provide technical assistance on debt issues.

Symbols

The following symbols have been used throughout:

• 0.0 indicates that a datum exists, but is negligible, or is a true zero

• .. indicates that a datum is not available.

• Dollars are current U.S. dollars unless otherwise specified.

Abbreviations