Kyrgyzstan's public debt climbed to $9.8 billion as of April 1, 2026, up from $6.7 billion a year earlier — a 47.7% increase that far outstrips the debt growth rates of its neighbors in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Central Asia, according to data published by Economist.kg.
The surge sets Kyrgyzstan apart from its regional partners in both scale and structure. While external liabilities have more than kept pace with the overall rise, they still dominate the country's debt profile, accounting for 54% of the total, or $5.2 billion — even as domestic borrowings more than doubled over the same period.
The contrast with fellow EAEU members is stark. Russia ended the first quarter of 2026 with a public debt of just over $448 billion, a 25% annual increase, but roughly $387 billion of that is domestically held. Kazakhstan's debt reached $76.5 billion, growing 15.6%, with around $60 billion coming from internal sources. Both countries thus rely predominantly on domestic financing — a sign of deeper, more mature capital markets.
Central Asian neighbors tell a similarly measured story. Uzbekistan's public debt edged up to nearly $47 billion from $42.4 billion, a rise of just under 10%. Tajikistan is actually trimming its obligations, reducing its debt from $3.1 billion in early 2025 to $2.8 billion a year later. Turkmenistan, meanwhile, has declared its internal debt fully repaid and keeps external borrowing below 5% of GDP — landing the country on the IMF's shortlist of nations with the world's lowest debt-to-GDP ratios, alongside Tuvalu, Brunei, Liechtenstein, and Macau. Even so, Turkmenistan's external debt nudged upward from roughly $3 billion to $3.9 billion over the past year.
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov addressed the issue last November, acknowledging that a significant debt burden had accumulated over three decades but stressing that repayments are on track. Between 2020 and 2025, the republic directed more than 258 billion soms ($3.3 billion) toward debt service — 170.5 billion soms ($1.9 billion) on external obligations and roughly 115 billion soms ($1.4 billion) on domestic ones. Japarov projected the debt problem would be fully resolved by 2035, citing robust economic growth and a pipeline of large-scale investment projects.
