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Description

The purpose of this report is to review the external debt situation in Asian developing countries (ADCs) at the end of 1985, the latest year for which comprehensive data are available. There are two sources of external debt data of developing countries: the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Significant improvements have been made in the presentation of the data of these two agencies during the past few years. Presently, however, the coverage of OECD data is generally believed to be broader than that of World Bank data. First, OECD and the World Bank report the debt of 155 and 108 developing countries, respectively. Second, it appears that OECD captures more of the private non-guaranteed debt and short-term debt than the World Bank. The OECD global estimate is 15 per cent higher than that of the World Bank. With few exceptions, the OECD estimates are higher than those of the World Bank even at the individual country levels. Also, it is to be expected that the relative difference between the estimates will tend to be higher for countries with more private non-guaranteed and/or short-term debt.