Countries With The Largest Budget Surplus

Most governments spend more than they collect. A budget surplus is the rarer opposite, a year in which a government takes in more revenue than it spends, and in 2025 it was rare indeed: only about 35 of the roughly 190 economies the International Monetary Fund tracks ran one, while the world as a whole ran a deficit worth about 5 percent of its combined output. Surpluses are usually expressed as a share of gross domestic product, which lets a tiny country's balance be compared with a giant's, and the lineup changes constantly because the forces that create a surplus, a spike in oil prices, a one-time windfall, a single good year of fishing revenue, tend not to last. The figures below come from the IMF's latest data, and the swings between one year and the next say more than the rankings themselves.

What a Budget Surplus Actually Measures

The standard yardstick is what the IMF calls general government net lending or borrowing: total revenue minus total spending across every level of government, stated as a percentage of GDP. A reading of plus five percent means the state collected revenue worth five percent of the economy beyond what it spent that year, while a minus sign marks a deficit. By that measure most of the world borrows. In 2025 the global balance was about minus 5 percent, advanced economies sat near minus 4.4 percent, and emerging and developing economies near minus 5.9 percent. The old idea that a surplus proves a government is well run does not survive contact with the data. A surplus can reflect a jump in commodity prices, a burst of one-time money, or a government underinvesting in the roads, schools, and pensions its people need. What it reliably tells you is narrow: for that year, the state saved rather than borrowed.

The Largest Surpluses in 2025

The 2025 leaders are a small and mismatched group. Tuvalu tops the list at almost 32 percent of GDP, a figure that means far less than it looks, since the same country ran a deficit the year before. Kuwait and Norway follow, both on the back of oil. The more telling story is who fell off. Grenada, which posted a surplus near 7 percent in 2024, swung to a deficit of about 5 percent in 2025, and Qatar slipped from a surplus into a small deficit as energy prices eased.

Figures show general government net lending or borrowing as a percentage of GDP. Source: IMF World Economic Outlook (2026 data release); 2025 figures are IMF estimates and the IMF reports by economy, so a few entries, such as Macao SAR and Aruba, are territories rather than fully independent states. Values are rounded to one decimal place.

The Oil and Gas Surpluses

The largest steady surpluses come from selling fossil fuels. Kuwait's balance, near 28 percent of GDP, is the headline case, though it carries an asterisk: the IMF figure counts the investment income its sovereign wealth fund earns abroad, so the government's day-to-day budget is far tighter than the number suggests. Norway is the cleaner example, with a surplus of about 9 percent in 2025 built almost entirely on oil and gas taxes. That figure has been sliding for three years, down from a record 25 percent in 2022 when European gas prices spiked after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The United Arab Emirates sits near 5 percent on the same fuel, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already dropped into deficit. The defining trait of these surpluses is that they are collected when prices are high and vanish when prices fall.

The Small-State Surpluses

A second group is made up of economies so small that a single revenue stream can swamp the entire budget. Tuvalu's leap to a 32 percent surplus came from fishing-license fees, income from the trust fund that backs its government, and the lease of its lucrative ".tv" internet domain, none of which arrives evenly year to year. Nauru shows the same whiplash, sliding from a 29 percent surplus in 2024 to under 4 percent in 2025, and Tonga, Samoa, and Antigua and Barbuda all lean on grants and licensing money that loom large only because the underlying economy is tiny. Grenada's reversal belongs here too: its 2024 surplus came from a surge in passport sales through its citizenship-by-investment program plus a hurricane-insurance payout, both one-time events that left a deficit behind once the money was spent.

The Financial and Gaming Hubs

A third group earns its surpluses from concentrated, high-margin industries. Singapore ran a surplus above 4 percent in 2025, supported by financial-sector revenue and a long tradition of conservative budgeting. Macao SAR is the most volatile member: it banks heavy taxes on its casinos, which produced a surplus near 7 percent in 2024 but a deficit of more than 37 percent in 2022, when the pandemic shut its borders and gaming revenue collapsed. Ireland belongs loosely here as well, though its surplus fell from 4 percent in 2024 to about 1.5 percent in 2025 as a one-time windfall of roughly 14 billion euros from a European court ruling against Apple worked its way out of the books.

What a Surplus Does and Does Not Tell You

A surplus is not automatically the mark of a healthy or well-run country, and a deficit is not automatically the mark of a failing one. The 2025 list makes the point on its own: most of the largest surpluses are windfalls that depend on forces outside the government's control, and the same governments tumble into deficit the moment prices drop or the one-time money runs out, as Tuvalu, Nauru, and Grenada each show in the space of a single year. A surplus can even signal a problem, when a government hoards revenue instead of investing in services its people need. The genuine lesson sits with the countries that treat a windfall as temporary. Norway funnels its petroleum surpluses into the world's largest sovereign wealth fund rather than spending them, and Grenada's fiscal rules are built to bank volatile passport revenue against the lean years that reliably follow. The skill is not in posting a surplus, which often comes down to luck, but in what a government does with one.