EconomyMoney and credit
How indebted is India?
Indian households owed 49.1% of GDP in Q4 FY26, up from 44.8% a year earlier and the highest since the BIS series begins in 2007. Households and companies together owed 105.1% of GDP.
Written for readers following credit and financial stability. Data to Q4 FY26.
Who owes what?
Indian households owed 49.1% of GDP in Q4 FY26, up from 44.8% a year earlier and the highest since the BIS series begins in 2007. Households and companies together owed 105.1% of GDP. Companies owed 56.0% and government 83.5%.
Debt as a share of GDP, by borrower
Quarterly, % of GDP, market value; government includes the Centre and the states.
How to read it. Households and companies borrow mostly from banks and NBFCs; government mostly through bonds.
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Is credit outrunning the economy?
By BIS's published credit-to-GDP gap, private credit was 4.3 points above its long-run trend against GDP in Q4 FY26, against 5.0 points below a year earlier. It crossed 2 points, the level from which Basel III guidance has regulators consider building a countercyclical capital buffer, in Q4 FY26, for the first time since Q4 FY12 in BIS's series for India, which begins in 1961.
Private credit against its long-run trend
Percentage points of GDP: credit to households and companies as a share of GDP, less its trend.
How to read it. Above zero, credit has grown faster than its trend relative to GDP; the BIS uses this gap as an early warning of banking stress. India's last long stretch above it, in the 2000s, preceded the bad-loan years.
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How much of income goes to servicing debt?
Interest and principal took 12.5% of the private sector's income in Q4 FY26, against 11.7% a year earlier; since 1999 it has ranged from 8.4% to 16.0%.
The private sector's debt service ratio
Interest and principal repayments as a share of income, households and companies together, %.
How to read it. The ratio rises with both debt and interest rates; it is the burden borrowers feel, where debt to GDP is the stock.
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Is India more indebted than other economies?
Indian households owe less than those in 6 of the 11 other economies shown, and less than the emerging-market average (45.0% of GDP); the advanced-economy average is 66.0%.
Private debt by borrower, Q4 FY26
% of GDP.
How to read it. Richer economies carry more debt: deeper financial systems lend more against higher incomes. India sits with the emerging economies.
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What the numbers can't tell you
- Debt to GDP rises when credit outgrows income
- The ratio climbs when lending grows faster than nominal GDP and falls when inflation lifts GDP. A rising ratio is a sign to watch, not a crisis on its own.
- The credit gap is a statistical trend
- BIS measures the gap against a slow-moving trend (a one-sided filter); after a long fall, as in India from 2012 to 2016, the trend itself is low, so a recovery can look like a boom.
- BIS figures are compiled from national data
- BIS builds these series from RBI and government data on a common definition, so India can be set beside other economies; they differ from RBI's own credit series.
The workings
The question
Data
Every chart has a table view, a CSV download and a link to its published JSON. Bundles are listed in data status.