The quarter the Maldives paid out three quarters of its reserves

Published analysis

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Standfirst. In three months the state paid foreign-currency debt worth 73.9 percent of the reserves it held when the quarter began.

Key facts

In Q2 2026 the state paid MVR 15,169.5m in external debt service, about USD 983.8m at the 15.42 applied rate, equal to 73.9 percent of the USD 1,331.8m official reserves held when the quarter began, per the Finance Ministry’s Q2 Quarterly Debt Bulletin and MMA monthly statistics Table 12.
The two big items are exact round dollar sums: MVR 7,710.0m to bondholders (exactly USD 500m, the sukuk) and MVR 6,168.0m to the Reserve Bank of India (exactly USD 400m, the swap).
Official reserves fell 52.1 percent in four months: USD 1,331.8m in March to USD 638.0m in July 2026.
Q2 external debt service was 7.5 times the average of the eleven preceding quarters; H1 2026 (USD 1,112.1m) is 1.99 times the whole of 2025.
The bulletin shows the RBI swap was repaid in full and a smaller balance drawn again: outstanding fell from MVR 6,168.0m to MVR 4,800.0m; the debt-to-GDP improvement from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 is entirely a GDP restatement, while the Q1 to Q2 improvement is real.
MVR 16,712.6m of domestic debt (17 percent of the domestic stock) is denominated in US dollars, including MVR 3,726.0m of RDC treasury bills repayable in USD.