Cuba: One of the World's Most Indebted Nations

Figures published by the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies (ICCAS) highlight Cuba's foreign debt crisis as at 2008, it is Latin America's most indebted country and one of the world's most indebted countries.

Table I. How Much Does Every Cuban Owe?
Cuban Foreign Debt per Capita in Comparative Context

Country
(ranked by foreign debt per capita)
Population
(in millions of inhabitants)

Estimated Foreign Debt
per capita, 2008
(in U.S. dollars)

Cuba
11.2
$4,714 [1]

Chile
16.6
$3,890

Jamaica
2.8
$3,707

Argentina
40.9
$3,317

Uruguay
3.5
$3,280

Trinidad and Tobago
1.3
$2,615

Costa Rica
4.3
$1,740

Mexico
111.2
$1,631

Dominican Republic
9.6
$1,219

Peru
29.5
$1,202

Brazil
198.7
$1,193

Ecuador
14.6
$1,164

Colombia
45.6
$914

Nicaragua
5.9
$545

Bolivia
9.8
$470

Haiti
9.0
$163




*Sources: For a detailed account of Cuba’s foreign debt see “Cuba: Hard Currency Debt, 2008,” Cuba Facts, Cuba Transition Project, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, May 2009, http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FACTS_Web/Cuba%20Facts%20Issue%2047%20May.htm.
The population figures and external debt data for other countries are based on estimates by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as published in the online edition of The World Factbook 2008, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook (accessed June 2009).






Table II. Top 10 Indebted Countries in the World, 2008


Country
(ranked by public debt as percentage of GDP in 2008)

Population
(in millions of inhabitants)
Public Debt as Percentage of GDP

Zimbabwe
11.4
241 %

Japan
127.1
170 %

Lebanon
4.0
164 %

Jamaica
2.8
124 %

Singapore
4.7
114 %

Italy
58.1
104 %

Cuba
11.2
96 % [2]

Seychelles
0.088
93 %

Greece
10.7
90 %

Sudan
41.1
86 %




Source: Cf. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2008, “Country Comparisons – Public Debt,”
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html (accessed June 2009).



Notes


1. Cuba’s total known external debt continued to balloon in 2008 to an estimated US$52.799 billion by the end of the year. The total foreign debt includes approximately US$21 billion in Soviet-era claims by Russia and other former socialist bloc trading partners. While the Soviet-era claims are denominated in non-convertible transferable rubles, Russia alone has asked for the equivalent of approximately US$20 billion in compensation for Moscow’s unpaid pre-1990 loans and credits to the Castro regime.

2. Cuban GDP for 2008 is estimated at US$55.18 billion (cf. The World Factbook 2008, “Cuba”). As there is neither an independent private sector nor meaningful distinction between the state and the economy within Cuba’s communist-run command economy, the government-owed foreign debt is used here as a proxy for the national (public) debt. With external obligations totaling nearly US$52.8 billion, the national debt reached approximately 96 percent of GDP in 2008, which made the Castro regime the seventh most indebted government in the world.