🇳🇱 Netherlands vs 🇨🇭 Switzerland

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The Netherlands currently owes about 1.5× as much as Switzerland — a gap of $203.3 billion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, the Netherlands ranks 89th by debt-to-GDP and Switzerland 98th. Measured per person, the Netherlands is 22nd and Switzerland 13th.

Analysis

By total government debt, the Netherlands ranks 18th and Switzerland 25th among the 135 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 Switzerland is roughly 1.4× that in the Netherlands ($47,417 vs $35,077 per person).

Both sit below 60% of GDP, the EU's Maastricht reference value — the Netherlands at 45% and Switzerland at 40%. A low ratio is not on its own a sign of strength: some governments borrow little because lenders will not lend to them.

The gap between them is widening: the Netherlands' debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($2K/sec vs $304/sec for Switzerland), adding roughly $125,452,800 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: the Netherlands' population (18M) is about 2.0× Switzerland's (9M), 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.

The Netherlands and Switzerland are both grouped under this site's “Europe” region, so this is, in effect, an intra-regional comparison as well.

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

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