Hidden debt—borrowing for which a government is liable, but which is not disclosed to its citizens or to other creditors—amounts to $1 trillion globally, Rhoda Weeks-Brown, Alissa Ashcroft and Karla Vasquez write in a new blog.

The blog is based on a new IMF staff paper, The Legal Foundations of Public Debt Transparency: Aligning the Law with Good Practices, which presents findings from a survey of 60 countries that examined vulnerabilities and loopholes in national laws that hinder debt transparency.

For example, fewer than half the countries surveyed have laws that require debt management and fiscal reports, while less than a quarter require disclosure of loan-level information—key legal features for facilitating transparency.
The private credit market, in which specialized non-bank financial institutions such as investment funds lend to corporate borrowers, topped $2.1 trillion globally last year in assets and committed capital. About three-quarters of this was in the United States, where its market share is nearing that of syndicated loans and high-yield bonds.