Overall Fiscal Balance

Overall Fiscal Balance is the difference between total fiscal revenue and total fiscal expenditure, including interest payments. It reflects the government's overall borrowing needs or surplus, indicating whether a country is running a fiscal deficit or surplus. The series is reported across government levels — central government, general government and the non-financial public sector, where available. This indicator is part of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Latin Macro Watch, a curated macroeconomic database for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Coverage

The series covers 24 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean at annual, monthly and quarterly frequency, spanning 1990 to 2026. Values are available as a share of GDP (% of GDP), in millions of USD and in millions of domestic currency, with additional variants such as PPP-adjusted, constant prices (CPI-deflated), seasonally adjusted, year-to-date (YTD) and fiscal-year (Q4–Q3) aggregation, plus transformations including MA3, MA6 and MA12 moving averages and MoM %, QoQ % and YoY % changes.

Sources

Data are compiled from national finance ministries, treasuries and central banks, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico, Banco de la República de Colombia, Ministerio de Hacienda de Costa Rica and Consejo Monetario Centroamericano, supporting comparable fiscal analysis across the region.

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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 Overall Fiscal Balance measure? It is the difference between total fiscal revenue and total fiscal expenditure, including interest payments, reflecting the government's overall borrowing needs or surplus and whether a country is running a fiscal deficit or surplus. Which government levels are reported? Where available, the balance is reported for central government, general government and the non-financial public sector, so coverage can differ by country. How many countries and which frequencies and period are covered? The indicator covers 24 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 as % of GDP, in millions of USD and in millions of domestic currency, with variants such as PPP-adjusted, constant prices, seasonally adjusted, YTD and fiscal-year aggregation, plus MA3, MA6, MA12 moving averages and MoM %, QoQ % and YoY % changes. Where does the data come from? Data are compiled from national finance ministries, treasuries and central banks, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico, Banco de la República de Colombia, Ministerio de Hacienda de Costa Rica and Consejo Monetario Centroamericano. What is this indicator typically used for? It is used to assess fiscal sustainability, public borrowing needs, debt dynamics and the fiscal stance of governments across Latin America and the Caribbean. How do I cite this indicator? Cite it as: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin Macro Watch — "Overall Fiscal Balance". data.iadb.org/dataset/latin-macro-watch-dataset.