The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a Quarterly Review article explaining how its debt securities statistics can be used to analyse the scale and structure of bond financing and related financial stability vulnerabilities. Using these statistics, the article documents a post-2008 shift from bank loans towards bond markets, with government issuance driving overall expansion while private sector borrowers continue to rely heavily on foreign currency bonds, mainly in US dollars. The BIS debt securities statistics cover issuance and outstanding amounts of bonds and bills, with breakdowns by domestic versus international markets, sector, currency, maturity and interest rate type, and quarterly data for issuers in about 50 major economies. The article reports that debt securities outstanding rose from 98% of global GDP in 2000 to over 135% by end-2024, exceeding USD 150 trillion, and that by end-March 2025 bonds accounted for 40% of total credit to non-financial borrowers globally. Since 2020, governments have been the largest borrowers in global bond markets, accounting for 52% of total debt securities outstanding, with government bonds rising from around 65% of global GDP in 2009 to over 80% by end-March 2025; central bank issuance is small on average but can spike in some small open economies and emerging market economies (EMEs). On currency composition, around 93% of bonds are denominated in the borrower’s domestic currency, but private sector foreign currency borrowing remains sizeable; the US dollar represented 63% of foreign currency bonds as of June 2025, up 20 percentage points since end-2007, while foreign currency issuance has broadened to 75 currencies. The article highlights monitoring challenges around hedging and the potential build-up of currency and duration mismatches on investors’ balance sheets, and it is accompanied by an annex introducing the statistics and data behind the charts.

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