Economy · External debt service · Comoros
Comoros’ external debt service rose to 17.3% of exports in 2024.
17.3% of exports
2024
Up 5.8 pp from 2023.
Updated 8 Oct 2026
In plain words
17.3% of exports
What it is. External debt service is the money a country pays each year in principal and interest on what it owes abroad, set against what it earns from selling goods, services and income to the rest of the world. Dividing by export earnings shows how much of the foreign currency coming in is committed to creditors before anything else is bought. For an island economy such as Comoros, where exports are small and concentrated in a few crops, the ratio can move sharply when either the repayments or the export earnings change.
Lower is better. A lower share leaves more foreign currency for imports of food, fuel and medicines, and makes the country less exposed to a bad export year. The latest figure is 17.3% of exports for 2024, up from 11.5% of exports a year earlier, a rise of 5.8 percentage points. It is the highest reading since 2015. The lowest in that span was 2.5% of exports in 2021, so the burden today is several times what it was then.
Why it matters. At 17.3% of exports, roughly one dollar in every six earned abroad goes to servicing external debt. That leaves the government and importers with less foreign currency to cover essentials that Comoros buys from abroad. If export earnings stay small, further repayments falling due would take an even larger share of what comes in.
| Period | External debt service · Comoros |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 7.2% of exports |
| 2016 | 5.5% of exports |
| 2017 | 2.9% of exports |
| 2018 | 4.8% of exports |
| 2019 | 6.1% of exports |
| 2020 | 13.9% of exports |
| 2021 | 2.5% of exports |
| 2022 | 2.7% of exports |
| 2023 | 11.5% of exports |
| 2024 | 17.3% of exports |
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0) · Licence: CC BY 4.0
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Strata-AF™ Data, External debt service, Comoros, 2024; source World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0), retrieved 8 Oct 2026; https://data.strata-af.com/economy/debt-service/comoros
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Methodology
Total debt service as a share of exports of goods, services and primary income. Unit: % of exports.
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (series DT.TDS.DECT.EX.ZS), retrieved through the World Bank API and published under CC BY 4.0. Updated annually; the World Bank's own source notes apply.