Singapore's 171% Debt Ratio is Not a Crisis; It is a Filing Cabinet

Reports treating headline debt-to-GDP figures as automatic alarm bells are lazy.  Singapore’s gross debt reached 173.1 per cent of GDP in 2024, easing slightly to 171.3 per cent in 2025.  Much of it was never borrowed to plug a hole.  It was money moved between the government's own accounts.

Borrowing to fund stimulus during a global economic shutdown is expensive.  Doing nothing costs more.  Keeping an industry on life support is cheaper than reviving one that has already died.  Where borrowed money goes matters more than the headline figure itself.  Money spent on infrastructure or maintaining production capacity is investment in future growth.  Money borrowed to transfer wealth from one part of the country to another simply impoverishes the nation.  Collating numbers against GDP without that context tells you nothing useful.

The Breakdown of Singapore’s Debt

Around 99 per cent of Singapore’s gross government debt was issued for non-spending purposes.  Special Singapore Government Securities meet the investment needs of the Central Provident Fund, Singapore’s mandatory retirement savings scheme, giving CPF members a government-backed instrument for their own compulsory savings.  Reserves Management Government Securities are issued to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, transferring Official Foreign Reserves above what the central bank needs into longer-term government investment.  Neither instrument funds a budget deficit.  Both simply move existing money between the government's own institutional accounts.

Only around 1 per cent of gross debt funds actual government spending, issued under the Significant Infrastructure Government Loan Act 2021, known as SINGA, covering Singapore Government Securities (Infrastructure) and Green Singapore Government Securities (Infrastructure).  The debt-to-GDP ratio attributable to SINGA alone stood at just 2.1 per cent as at December 2024.  Strict statutory safeguards govern how this borrowing can be used, restricted to financing and capitalising nationally significant infrastructure.

Singapore Carries No External Sovereign Debt

Every Singapore Government Security is issued domestically, denominated in Singapore dollars, and sold to domestic institutions including CPF and MAS.  Singapore’s government does not borrow in foreign currency, and does not owe money to foreign creditors on its own sovereign account.  Singapore’s separately reported external debt figure, S$3.007 trillion as at the third quarter of 2025, reflects the country’s aggregate private sector liabilities, bank borrowings and corporate debt owed to non-residents, not government debt.  Confusing the two is how a report ends up calling Singapore’s finances alarming.

The Singapore Government maintains a strong balance sheet with no net debt, since financial assets remain well in excess of liabilities.  This net asset position generates real investment returns on the nation's reserves, made available for government spending through the Net Investment Returns Contribution.  It is also the reason Singapore holds the top AAA credit rating from S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s, and Fitch Ratings, unusual for a country whose gross debt ratio sits second only to Japan among OECD economies.  A country cannot simultaneously carry the world’s most cautious credit rating and a fiscal crisis.  Singapore’s figures make clear the debt ratio is not measuring recklessness.  It is measuring a very large, very carefully managed set of internal transfers, dressed up in a number that looks alarming only to someone who has not checked what it contains.

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Terence Nunis | Executive Chairman, Equinox Zenith | Author, The 1% Playbook: The Billionaire Cheat Code