How to Use foreign debt in a Sentence

foreign debt

noun
  • Yields from foreign debt can be affected by currency markets.
    — Jesse Pound, CNBC, 9 Dec. 2024
  • Kenya’s foreign debt burden came under the spotlight in two separate ratings agency reports.
    — Preeti Jha, semafor.com, 28 July 2025
  • The ruble plunged against the dollar and Russia defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time since 1918.
    — David J. Lynch, Washington Post, 23 Feb. 2024
  • Sudan’s economy has been battered by hyperinflation and weighed down by massive foreign debt.
    — John Hudson, Washington Post, 16 Apr. 2023
  • China owns about 10% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, which exceeds $51 billion.
    — Krishan Francis, ajc, 8 Mar. 2023
  • Around 40% of Cambodia’s $10 billion foreign debt is owed to China.
    — Sam Rainsy, TIME, 24 June 2024
  • The sanctions also slammed the local currency, driving up the cost of the company’s foreign debt by several million dollars.
    — Alex Budak, Harvard Business Review, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Given the scale of the tragedy and the size of its foreign debt, Venezuela needs far more than the aid now arriving to assist those affected and rebuild its infrastructure.
    — Gonzalo Zegarra, CNN Money, 29 June 2026
  • And before embarking on their development agenda, they have been forced to contend with Pakistan’s crippling foreign debt.
    — Madiha Afzal, Foreign Affairs, 13 Feb. 2019
  • In other cases, governments simply opted to default rather than make the painful cuts to social programs that would have been necessary to service their foreign debt on schedule.
    — Shantayanan Devarajan, Foreign Affairs, 4 Aug. 2022
  • The cedi is up more than 40% against the dollar this year, which has helped the gold and cocoa producer to reduce its foreign debt and signaled an economic recovery.
    — Nana Oye Ankrah, semafor.com, 21 July 2025
  • In these transactions, a country reduces its foreign debt by giving a company an equity stake in a local company or property.
    — Nora Gámez Torres, Miami Herald, 16 July 2025
  • Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in history and has suspended foreign debt repayments.
    — Alex Turnbull, ajc, 1 May 2023
  • As a last resort, the government defaults on its foreign debt of $51 billion after running out of foreign exchange to import essential goods.
    — Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz, 21 Mar. 2023
  • The country of 105 million people is sinking under foreign debt and contending with a severe shortage of hard currency.
    — Claire Parker, Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2023
  • The 30-plus other AGOA nations, many laden with heavy foreign debt, are in a similar tailspin, though some more than others.
    — Jasmin Malik Chua, Sourcing Journal, 8 May 2025
  • For debtor nations, debt-for-nature swaps provide financial relief by reducing the burden of foreign debt, freeing up resources for other developmental needs.
    — The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 26 July 2024
  • This has not proved fatal in the Sri Lankan case, since Chinese debt accounts for only about ten percent of the country’s foreign debt and an even smaller share of the debt that must be serviced this year.
    — Shantayanan Devarajan, Foreign Affairs, 4 Aug. 2022
  • In 2022, Ghana—the world’s sixth-biggest producer of gold and number two exporter of cocoa—defaulted on its domestic and foreign debt obligations.
    — Charlie Campbell, Time, 30 Oct. 2025
  • Argentina’s large and restructured stock of foreign debt, together with its obligations with the IMF, present another major challenge in the near future.
    — Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes, 13 Jan. 2025
  • Sri Lanka’s suspension of foreign debt payments in April 2022 triggered empty supermarkets and acute shortfalls in food, fuel and medicine.
    — Sven Van Mourik, The Dial, 31 Mar. 2026
  • For years leading up to the pandemic, the African continent as a whole suffered financially more from foreign investors’ profit transfers and from illicit financial flows than from foreign debt payments.
    — Martín Abregú, Foreign Affairs, 27 Nov. 2024
  • The Treasury’s catch-all basket for global economic cleanup, called the Exchange Stabilization Fund, has been used in novel ways before, but snapping up foreign debt is unusual.
    — Rohan Goswami, semafor.com, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Ethiopia wants to restructure its looming foreign debt and to redeploy federal troops to contain a spreading insurgency in Oromiya, its most populous province and the political heartland for Abiy.
    — John Hudson, Washington Post, 16 Mar. 2023
  • The company defaulted on its foreign debt in late 2021, and has since been embroiled in a difficult negotiation with international bondholders.
    — Alexander Saeedy, WSJ, 27 Feb. 2023
  • The current administration has strongly favored India, but many Maldivians worry about Indian military presence on their shores, as well as mounting foreign debt.
    — Sushmita Pathak, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 Sep. 2023
  • Sri Lanka is struggling with the worst financial crisis since its independence from Britain in 1948 after the country’s foreign exchange hit record lows and triggered its first foreign debt default last year.
    — Reuters, CNN, 28 June 2023
  • Ghana's currency has experienced a sharp decline and the country has agreed a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund, after defaulting on most of its foreign debt.
    — Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR, 25 Feb. 2024
  • Take Nigeria’s Paris Club agreement of 2005, which covered 86 percent of Nigeria’s total foreign debt of $35 billion.
    — Sven Van Mourik, The Dial, 31 Mar. 2026
  • How President Alberto Fernández handles Argentina’s foreign debt crisis will define his legacy.
    — Bruno Binetti, Foreign Affairs, 9 Mar. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'foreign debt.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: