What country has the highest external national debt?

Today I got this interesting question "Which country has the highest external national debt?" in a quiz show and was eager to know the answer. I tried by every means and got various interesting data charts. My expectation was that the answer must be some third world country or some developing nation. But when I got the real answer, it left me awe struck. According to the facts our own country, the world super power USA is the country with the highest external national debt. Can you believe it?

Before going into the facts, we must know what is meant by external national debt? Does external debt is what the country lends from other countries? No, the external debt consists of public and private debt that has to be paid through foreign currency or the services and goods to other country or other country nationals or even to non residents.

According to the The World Factbook, USA has a debt of $13,773,000 to the external entities. This means our external debt is 95% of our total GDP. UK is coming close second with $12,670,000 with 375% of its national GDP. The another fact that catches my eye is of Brunei. It has only $0 external national debt. Can you imagine?



I can't?

After all these I can say that I am feeling ashamed of being a national of country with the highest external national debt. Are you?

We must not be as the debt is only 95% of our GDP, there are countries like Zimbabwe who has the debt almost 288% of their GDP. So we should not consider this debt as very bad, as we can pay back those debts whenever our economy comes out of the worst phase of economic downturn and moreover 25% of these debts are hold by foreigners, so the figure is not so bad after all. We should be united and not to panic. Instead we can try hard to make our country financially strong to shed the tag of the country with the highest external national debt.