🇨🇬 Republic of the Congo vs 🇯🇵 Japan

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. Japan currently owes about 566.1× as much as the Republic of the Congo — a gap of $8.71 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

Net debt and interest: IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2026, general government, 2025, mostly IMF estimates. A dash means no comparable figure. How these are calculated.

Among the 194 governments tracked here, the Republic of the Congo ranks 25th by debt-to-GDP and Japan 1st. Measured per person, the Republic of the Congo is 121st and Japan 3rd.

Analysis

By total government debt, the Republic of the Congo ranks 117th and Japan 3rd among the 194 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in Japan is roughly 30.8× that in the Republic of the Congo ($71,124 vs $2,311 per person).

Both countries carry debt above 100% of GDP — the Republic of the Congo at 100% and Japan at 205% — meaning each owes more than a full year's worth of national output. What that means for each depends on who holds the debt, in what currency and at what interest rate.

The IMF puts Japan at 132% of GDP net of financial assets, and publishes no net debt figure for the Republic of the Congo. The Republic of the Congo spends about 14% of government revenue on net interest ($535 million in 2025), and Japan about 0.5% ($8.8 billion in 2025). The Republic of the Congo carries the lower debt ratio but the heavier interest bill: rates, currency and assets matter as well as the size of the debt. See the full interest ranking.

The gap between them is narrowing: the Republic of the Congo's debt is growing faster in dollar terms (−$3/sec vs −$15K/sec for Japan), closing the difference by roughly $1,265,328,000 per day. At that pace — and holding both growth rates constant, a simplification, since real-world rates shift with fiscal policy — the two would reach a similar total in roughly 19 years.

Scale is part of the story too: Japan's population (123M) is about 18.4× the Republic of the Congo's (7M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

More Republic of the Congo comparisons