Global debt rose to a record 226 trillion dollars in 2020 as the world was hit by the raging Covid-19 pandemic and a deep recession, the International Monetary Fund announced.

Global debt rose by 28 percent, to 256 percent of gross domestic product in 2020, the largest one-year debt surge since World War II, the director of the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department, wrote in a blog yesterday with his colleagues, citing figures from the IMF's latest Global Debt Database.

Debt increases are particularly striking in advanced economies, where public debt rose from around 70 percent of GDP in 2007 to 124 percent of GDP in 2020.

Meanwhile, private debt rose at a more moderate pace from 164, to 178 percent of GDP in the same period, according to the IMF.

The IMF officials noted that a crucial challenge for policymakers is to "strike the right mix of fiscal and monetary policies in an environment of high debt and rising inflation", as the debt surge amplifies vulnerabilities.