Foreign Currency Credit

Foreign Currency Credit is a Latin Macro Watch indicator from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that measures the stock of credit provided by depository institutions that is denominated in foreign currencies, regardless of the sector receiving the funds. Reported as the US-dollar equivalent of all foreign-currency-denominated bank credit (not necessarily denominated exclusively in US dollars), with coverage limited to commercial and development banks, the series is a key gauge of financial dollarization across Latin America and the Caribbean. It helps analysts, policymakers and researchers monitor currency mismatch and external vulnerability in banking systems.

Coverage

The indicator covers 11 countries at annual, monthly and quarterly frequency, spanning 1990–2026. Values are available in millions of USD, as a share of GDP (% of GDP) and as a share of total credit (% of total credit), each in average-of-period and end-of-period variants, with transformations including 3-, 6- and 12-month moving averages (MA3, MA6, MA12) and month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year percentage changes (MoM %, QoQ %, YoY %).

Sources

Data are compiled from national central banks and statistics agencies, including Banco Central de Chile, Banco de Mexico (Banxico), Banco Central de la República Argentina and Banco de la República de Colombia. The series is curated and standardized by the Latin Macro Watch dataset on the IDB Open Data portal.

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Format	CSV
Language	en
Country	Argentina Bahamas Trinidad & Tobago Belize Costa Rica Dominican Republic Ecuador Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia El Salvador Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Guatemala Guyana Haiti Honduras Panama Uruguay Venezuela Barbados Paraguay Peru Suriname
Data notes	What does Foreign Currency Credit measure? It measures the stock of credit provided by depository institutions that is denominated in foreign currencies, regardless of the sector receiving the funds. How is the series denominated and what is its bank coverage? It is reported as the US-dollar equivalent of all foreign-currency-denominated bank credit, which is not necessarily exclusively in US dollars, and coverage is limited to commercial and development banks. How many countries and which frequencies and period are covered? The indicator covers 11 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean at annual, monthly and quarterly frequency, spanning 1990 to 2026. What units and transformations are available? Values are available in millions of USD, as a share of GDP and as a share of total credit, in average-of-period and end-of-period variants, with MA3/MA6/MA12 and MoM %, QoQ %, YoY % transformations. Where does the data come from? Data are compiled from national central banks and statistics agencies, including Banco Central de Chile, Banco de Mexico (Banxico) and Banco Central de la República Argentina. How do I cite this indicator? Cite it as: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin Macro Watch — "Foreign Currency Credit". data.iadb.org/dataset/latin-macro-watch-dataset.