When it comes to Afghanistan, it is 1.5 percent, 1.6 percent, and 1.7 percent of the revenue in the three years, the report stated.
India’s scheduled external debt payment is 3.2 percent, 3.1 percent, and 3.3 percent of its revenue in these three years. Sri Lanka is in the most vulnerable position followed by Pakistan. High indebtedness and shortage of foreign exchange reserves invited massive protests in both countries as the former strongman president of Sri Lanka—Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee the country last year. According to the report, Sri Lanka’s external debt payment to annual revenue ratio is projected to be 81.4 percent, 75 percent, and 78.6 percent in 2022, 2023 and 2024, respectively. The report said Sri Lanka is spending the highest percentage of its revenue on servicing foreign debt. When it comes to Pakistan, its projected external debt payment in these three years is expected to be 40 percent, 46.7 percent, and 42.5 percent. Projected external debt payment by Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Maldives in these three years compared to their government’s annual revenue is projected to be much higher than that of Nepal, according to the report. The Debt Justice said that the figures for external government debt payments have been calculated primarily from the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics database while the figures for government revenue are calculated from World Economic Outlook by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in October last year. Data show that Nepal is less vulnerable to external debt compared to other South Asian countries. "Nepal still has a lot of fiscal space to grow its external debt," said an economist. According to the Public Debt Management Office, Nepal’s total outstanding external debt stood at Rs 1102.5 billion out of a total of Rs 2070.5 billion as of the second quarter of the current fiscal year 2022-23. Nepal’s total debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio as of the second quarter of this fiscal stood at 42.67 percent and the share of external debt was 22.72 percent. Nepal’s newly introduced law on Public Debt Management allows the government to raise external loans up to one-third of the country's GDP in the past year. Officials say as nearly 90 percent of external loans have been received from multilateral donors like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, whose interest rate is below one percent, Nepal is not facing much risk of inflated cost. But in recent years, Nepal’s public debt has been growing rapidly. Both external and internal loans of the government have been surging to cover the cost of post-earthquake reconstruction since 2015 and to tackle Covid-19, according to the PDMO. As a result, the government has been forced to spend big on debt servicing. A total of Rs 186.6 billion has been allocated for loan repayment in the current fiscal year, of which Rs 134.32 billion is for internal debt servicing. In the last fiscal year, the government spent Rs 121.99 billion on debt servicing. Amid growing debt liability amid sluggish revenue collection, there are concerns that the debt would be used in projects with high yields. “It is necessary to ensure that debt is utilized in financially feasible high-yielding sectors,” said the economist. Percentage of external debt against govt's revenue
| Year | ||||||
| Country | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
| Nepal | 3.3 | 3.5 | 3.2 | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.5 |
| India | 2.9 | 5.3 | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.1 | 3.3 |
| Bangladesh | 7.1 | 6.8 | 7.6 | 8.3 | 9.6 | 10 |
| Bhutan | 9.1 | 6.2 | 14.4 | 38.9 | 31.9 | 37.5 |
| Sri Lanka | 47 | 59.3 | 57 | 81.4 | 75 | 78.6 |
| Pakistan | 20.4 | 22.9 | 30.9 | 40 | 46.7 | 42.5 |
| Maldives | 27 | 26.2 | 53.3 | 36.8 | 21.2 | 14 |
| Afghanistan | 0.9 | 0.7 | 1.8 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 |
