Who gets the interest?

Every government that borrows pays interest to whoever holds its bonds: its own central bank, its own pension funds and banks, and foreign investors and central banks. Click a country to see who it pays, what its short and long bonds yield, and a rough sum of the money going each way.

Government debt, % of GDP (IMF 2026) interest paid to that country interest received from it Outlined: full holder data

Could two countries offset their interest?

What each government pays to holders in the other country, from the cross-holdings sources report. Pick any pair with reported holdings.

and

Why the interest doesn't simply cancel out

  • Different people pay and get paid. The US Treasury pays interest to Japan's Ministry of Finance (which holds most of Japan's reserves) and to Japanese banks and insurers. The Japanese government pays its interest mostly to Japanese savers and the Bank of Japan. The few US funds that hold Japanese bonds are private investors, not the US government. There is no account where the two bills could be set against each other.
  • Different currencies. The US pays in dollars and Japan in yen. A swap would need an exchange rate and someone to take the currency risk.
  • Different rates. US debt costs around 3–4% a year and Japanese debt under 1%, so equal holdings do not mean equal interest.
  • The bond can be sold. A holder can sell to anyone at any time; a netting deal would only last as long as both stopped trading.
  • Much of it already goes home. Interest paid to a country's own central bank mostly returns to its treasury as central bank profit, at least when the bank is making money. That is the largest "offset" that actually happens.
  • What the net figure does tell you is the direction of the flow: which country, in total, earns more from the other's government than it pays the other.

How the sums are done

  • Annual interest = debt outstanding × the average interest rate on that debt (from the finance ministry, debt office or budget figures). Today's 2-year and 10-year yields show where new borrowing is priced; the average rate moves towards them slowly as old bonds mature.
  • Each holder's share is assumed to earn the average rate. In reality foreign central banks hold more short-dated bills and pension funds more long bonds, so this is an approximation.
  • Foreign holders by country are shown only where an official source names them. The US Treasury publishes this monthly; most countries publish only the total held abroad. Holdings in custody centres (UK, Belgium, Luxembourg, Cayman) often belong to investors elsewhere.
  • Every figure is labelled reported (published by the source) or derived (worked out here from reported figures). Dollar values use the exchange rates listed below.

Sources

    An illustration built from published statistics with different dates and definitions, not a live feed or investment advice. Ownership data is published with a lag of one to six months. See also who owns the debt and what happens if the interest isn't paid. Or explore what would happen if the interest stopped.