Countries Where Government Spends the Most 2023
About This Dataset
Countries Where Government Spends the Most 2023
Countries ranked by government expense (% of GDP) in 2023, using World Bank figures for the 85 countries that reported that year. Kiribati leads on 83.68, ahead of Ukraine (65.56) and Greece (47.30). Central government expense, which covers running costs but not investment spending, as a share of GDP. Regional and local government is excluded, so federal countries look smaller than the state actually is.
Analysis
Kiribati (83.68), Ukraine (65.56) and Greece (47.30) take the top three. Across the twenty shown, values run from 83.68 down to 36.16, a spread of 47.52. Kiribati is 1.28 times Ukraine, the country in second place. 9 of the 20 reach half the leading figure, 41.84 or more. The chart shows the twenty highest of 85 reporting countries, so it describes the top of the distribution rather than the world average.
Source:
World Bank
Key Findings
🏆
Kiribati leads in Government Expense (% of GDP) with 83.68 in 2023.
📊
Average Government Expense (% of GDP) in 2023: 44 · median: 41.
↔️
Gap in 2023: Kiribati is 2.3× larger than Namibia.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- World Bank
- Coverage
- 20 entities · 2023 · 20 observations
- Measure
- Government Expense (% of GDP)
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2023.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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