Your asset base is in truth meaningless (and often very inflated). The true measure is your ability to pay this debt and in order to pay this debt you need to g

Your asset base is in truth meaningless (and often very inflated). The true measure is your ability to pay this debt and in order to pay this debt you need to generate revenue, at a country scale this revenue is GDP. A bank's first think to look at is affordability, are you able to actually pay the installments on this. Recoverability of initial capital is secondary and only matters in a liquidation event, you don't want to have to worry about a country-wide liquidation event (in truth they can print money, so long as your debts denominated in your currency and they accept this).