Vanuatu

Vanuatu: Pacific Economy With Moderate Debt and No Standing Military

Vanuatu's economy generated gross domestic product of $1,117,972,034.23 in 2024, per World Bank WDI, with a population of 327,777 in the same year, producing a GDP per capita of $3,410.77 for 2024. The IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 43.2% of GDP for 2026, while World Bank WDI records foreign exchange reserves of $614,649,778.92 for 2024 — a reserves figure that, set against the debt projection, suggests a reasonably supported external position by the measures captured here.

Governance

V-Dem's v15 dataset scores Vanuatu's electoral democracy at 0.729 and liberal democracy at 0.623 for 2025, with a state-capacity score of 0.822 for the same year. The state-capacity score is the highest of the three governance measures in this bundle, indicating comparatively strong administrative functioning as assessed by V-Dem relative to the electoral and liberal democracy components.

Military capacity

The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset records zero active military personnel for Vanuatu in 2022, with a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 7.8500934e-06 for the same year. The absence of recorded standing personnel, paired with a non-zero CINC score, indicates that Vanuatu's measured national capability for that year derives from its demographic and economic weight in the Correlates of War framework rather than from a standing armed force.

Energy

Our World in Data's Energy dataset records primary energy consumption of 0.0044 exajoules for 2023 and electricity generation of 0.08 terawatt-hours for 2023. Oil and gas production are both recorded at zero for 2016, indicating no domestic hydrocarbon extraction appears in this series.

Data gaps

• No SIPRI military expenditure figures are present, so defense spending cannot be benchmarked against the zero-personnel finding above.
• Oil and gas production data date to 2016, the oldest figures in this bundle, while the rest of the energy series runs to 2023.
• The governance figures are dated 2025, the capability figures 2022, and the economic figures 2024 and 2026; no single year spans all categories in this bundle.

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