Bhutan

Bhutan: High Debt Load Alongside a Strong State-Capacity Score

Bhutan's economy produced gross domestic product of $3,012,896,789.25 in 2023, per World Bank WDI, with a population of 791,524 in 2024. That combination yields a GDP per capita of $3,831.33 for 2023, per World Bank WDI. The IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 120.3% of GDP for 2026, a figure that exceeds Bhutan's own annual GDP as recorded above, while World Bank WDI records foreign exchange reserves of $941,017,689.21 for 2024. The scale of the debt projection relative to the reserves and GDP figures above marks Bhutan's public finances as highly leveraged.

Governance

V-Dem's v15 dataset scores Bhutan's electoral democracy at 0.566 and liberal democracy at 0.457 for 2025, both markedly lower than the state-capacity score below. The same dataset assigns a state-capacity score of 0.871 for 2025, a wide spread between the democracy measures and the administrative-capacity measure that V-Dem captures separately.

Military capacity

The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset records 6,000 active military personnel for Bhutan, a figure carried from 2000 and considerably older than most other series in this bundle. The same dataset's Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score for Bhutan is 5.8282079e-05, dated 2022. Because the personnel figure and the CINC score come from different years of the same dataset, this briefing treats them as two separate data points rather than a single current snapshot of Bhutan's military establishment.

Energy

Our World in Data's Energy dataset records primary energy consumption of 0.0532 exajoules for 2023 and electricity generation of 11.0 terawatt-hours for 2024. The electricity figure is large relative to Bhutan's own primary energy consumption figure above, consistent with a generation base oriented toward electricity output, though this bundle contains no series breaking generation down by source. Oil and gas production are both recorded at zero for 2016.

Data gaps

• The active-personnel figure is dated 2000, the oldest series in this bundle, while the CINC score from the same dataset is dated 2022; the two should not be assumed to describe the same period.
• No SIPRI military expenditure figures are present.
• Oil and gas production data date to 2016.

Sources: World Bank WDI; IMF WEO; V-Dem v15; Correlates of War National Material Capabilities; Our World in Data (Energy)