The government debt-to-GDP ratio measures a country's total public debt as a percentage of its gross domestic product, providing a standard way to compare government indebtedness across countries and over time relative to the size of the economy available to service and eventually repay that debt. Compiled by national treasuries and finance ministries and tracked comparatively by international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the OECD, the ratio became a particularly prominent policy benchmark after the 1992 Maastricht Treaty set a 60 percent reference value for European Union member states, and it remains a central, if contested, gauge economists and credit rating agencies use to assess fiscal sustainability.
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1. Debt-to-GDP Ratio (Wikipedia)
WikipediaOpening paragraph, Debt-to-GDP ratio Wikipedia article
In economics, the debt-to-GDP ratio is the ratio of a country's accumulation of government debt to its gross domestic product (GDP).
Introduction, frequency
It should not be confused with a deficit-to-GDP ratio, which, for countries running budget deficits, measures a country's annual net fiscal loss in a given year (government budget balance, or the net change in debt per annum) as a percentage share of that country's GDP; for countries running budget surpluses, a surplus-to-GDP ratio measures a country's annual net fiscal gain as a share of that country's GDP.
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