Local Currency Credit

Local currency credit is the stock of credit provided by depository institutions that is denominated in the domestic currency, regardless of the sector receiving the funds. It is a key measure of domestic financial intermediation and currency composition of credit, useful for assessing credit growth, dollarization and financial-sector risk. This Latin Macro Watch indicator, published by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on data.iadb.org, assembles comparable local-currency credit series for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Coverage

The indicator covers 10 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean at annual, monthly and quarterly frequency over the period 1990–2026. Values are available in millions of domestic currency, millions of USD, as a share of GDP and as a share of total credit, with end-of-period, average-of-period and CPI-deflated constant-price variants. Transformations include moving averages (MA3, MA6, MA12) and month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year percentage changes. The series is derived as total credit minus foreign-currency credit, capturing the domestic-currency portion of total bank credit across all borrower sectors; it is not published directly by the source and coverage is limited to commercial and development banks.

Sources

Figures are compiled from national central banks and statistical agencies, including the Banco de Mexico (Banxico), the Banco de la República de Colombia, the Banco Central de Chile, the Banco Central de la República Argentina and the Central Bank of Barbados, among others. IDB harmonizes these national sources for cross-country comparison.

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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 Local Currency Credit measure? It measures the stock of credit provided by depository institutions that is denominated in the domestic currency, regardless of the sector receiving the funds. How is the series constructed? It is derived as total credit minus foreign-currency credit, capturing the domestic-currency portion of total bank credit across all borrower sectors. It is not published directly by the source, and coverage is limited to commercial and development banks. How many countries and which frequencies and period are covered? The indicator covers 10 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean at annual, monthly and quarterly frequency, spanning 1990–2026. What units and transformations are available? Values are available in millions of domestic currency, millions of USD, as a share of GDP and as a share of total credit, with end-of-period, average-of-period and CPI-deflated constant-price variants. Transformations include MA3, MA6, MA12 moving averages and month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year percentage changes. Where does the data come from? Data are compiled from national central banks and statistical agencies, including the Banco de Mexico (Banxico), Banco de la República de Colombia, Banco Central de Chile, Banco Central de la República Argentina and the Central Bank of Barbados, then harmonized by the IDB. How do I cite this indicator? Cite it as: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin Macro Watch — "Local Currency Credit". data.iadb.org/dataset/latin-macro-watch-dataset.