Dubai, a ounce-thriving Gulf emirate, has sent world markets into a tailspin with an acknowledgement it will need a six-month moratorium on about US$59 million's worth of debt owed by its sprawling conglomerate Dubai World.

But Dubai is hardly alone in having come to the uncomfortable conclusion that its Biblical seven fat years are over.

The organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has warned that the world's 30 leading industrialised economies will see their indebtedness grow to 100 percent of output in 2010, a near doubling from the percentage 20 years ago.

Japan's public debt is forecast to hit 200 percent of output next year. Comparable projections are 127.3 percent in Italy and 111.8 percent in Greece.

The debt weighing on national budgets will have soared by up to 45 percent worldwide in the period from 2007 to 2010, leading ratings agency Moody's estimated on Wednesday.

"Preliminary estimates suggest that the total stock of sovereign debt will have risen by as much as 45 percent or US$15.3 trillion from 2007 to 2010," Moody's analyst Jaime Reusche said in a statement.

This is "over 100 times the inflation-adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan," the huge U.S. investment program launched to revive Europe after World War II, he added.

Moody's estimated in a report that the total global debt in 2010 would reach more than US$49 trillion.

The members of the G-7 grouping of rich countries will account for more than three-quarters of the increase, "as their fiscal accounts have been hit hardest by the crisis," Reusche said.

"As growth turns negative in 2009 for most countries, the relative debt load becomes harder to bear."