Obtaining comprehensive data and information on public debt is challenging. Data availability is limited along the dimensions of time, country coverage, and debt completeness. For example, data on external public debt for developing countries are generally available from the GDF dataset. However, the GDF does not cover advanced economies, and separates public and private components of external debt only for long-term debt. Similarly, the IFS database starts in 1970, but data are available for just a handful of countries in the early years. As noted, datasets of regional or institutional bodies cover public debt for subsets of countries and also typically.
