Tonga Court-rule interest on judgment debts
Tonga Court-rule interest on judgment debts is 10 percent, in force since 1 Jan 2007. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Tonga's judgment-debt interest is set by court rules, not by statute: Order 30 rule 2 of the Supreme Court Rules 2007 carries interest on every judgment debt from judgment until satisfaction at 10% per annum unless the Court specifies otherwise. The Supreme Court Act itself contains no interest provision.
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| Current value | 10 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2007-01-01 |
| Official source | Supreme Court Rules 2007 (Laws of Tonga), O.30 r. 2: '(1) Every judgment debt shall carry interest from the time of judgment being given until the judgment is satisfied. (2) Unless the Court specifies otherwise, the interest under paragraph 1 shall be at the rate of 10% per annum. (3) The interest may be levied under any execution order upon judgment'; O.1 r. 1: 'These rules may be cited as the Supreme Court Rules 2007 and shall come into effect on 1 January 2007' |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. Read from the full text of the Supreme Court Rules 2007 as published by PacLII, the only reachable full-text source for Tongan court rules; PacLII's Tonga rules database records its last update as 3 July 2018 and holds later rules from 2016, so an amendment to Order 30 made after that date would not be visible. No amendment to the 10% figure was found. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
THIS IS A COURT-RULE RATE, NOT A STATUTORY ONE — and at 10% it is the highest of the small-jurisdiction defaults. The Supreme Court Act (Tonga) contains no interest provision at all; the figure lives in rules of court for the practice and procedure of the Supreme Court, which are made by the Chief Justice and can be changed without legislation. IT IS ALSO A DEFAULT, NOT AN ENTITLEMENT: O.30 r. 2(2) applies only 'unless the Court specifies otherwise', so the judge may fix a different rate — or none — in the judgment itself. Always read the order before assuming 10%. SCOPE: post-judgment, running from the time judgment is given until the judgment is satisfied, and leviable under any execution order (O.30 r. 2(3)); O.30 also lists the modes of enforcement (writ of distress, garnishee, charging order, receiver, committal). NO PRE-JUDGMENT RATE: the Rules fix no rate for the period before judgment. Where the Rules make no appropriate provision, O.2 directs the Court to the English rules and general construction provisions, so pre-judgment interest is a matter for the Court's award in each case, not a published percentage. NO LATE-PAYMENT REGIME: nothing in Tongan law gives a creditor default interest on an overdue invoice outside contract — interest arrives only with a judgment. Simple interest; the rule provides for no compounding. No civil/commercial split and no consumer variant.
Get it programmatically
curl https://ausref.dev/v1/to/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://ausref.dev/v1/to/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/to/statutory-interestOther Tonga series: NRBT policy rate (mid-rate of the Interest Rate Corridor) · Consumption Tax (CT) standard rate · Consumption tax registration threshold · National minimum wage · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Vanuatu · Australia · Fiji · New Zealand · Papua New Guinea · all 8