Fiscal Interest Payments

Fiscal Interest Payments is a Latin Macro Watch indicator from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that measures government spending on interest owed for public debt. It reflects the cost of government borrowing and is recorded separately from primary expenditures. The series is reported across government levels — central government, general government and the non-financial public sector (NFPS), where available — so coverage and classification may vary by country and country-specific notes should be consulted. It helps analysts, policymakers and researchers assess debt-servicing burdens and fiscal sustainability across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Coverage

The indicator covers 22 countries at annual, monthly and quarterly frequency, spanning 1990–2026. Values are available in millions of domestic currency, millions of USD, as a share of GDP (% of GDP), PPP adjusted, in constant CPI-deflated prices, seasonally adjusted, on a fiscal-year (Q4–Q3 aggregation) basis and year-to-date (YTD), with transformations including MA3, MA6, MA12 moving averages and MoM %, QoQ % and YoY % changes.

Sources

Data are compiled from national finance ministries, treasuries, central banks and statistics agencies, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico, Ministerio de Economía de 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 Fiscal Interest Payments measure? It measures government expenditure on interest owed for public debt, reflecting the cost of government borrowing and recorded separately from primary expenditures. Which government levels are reported? The series is reported across central government, general government and the non-financial public sector, where available, so the coverage perimeter can differ by country. How many countries and which frequencies and period are covered? The indicator covers 22 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 domestic currency and USD, as a share of GDP, PPP adjusted, in constant CPI-deflated prices, seasonally adjusted, on a fiscal-year basis and YTD, with MA3/MA6/MA12 and MoM %, QoQ %, YoY % transformations. Where does the data come from? Data are compiled from national finance ministries, treasuries, central banks and statistics agencies, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico and Banco de la República de Colombia. How do I cite this indicator? Cite it as: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin Macro Watch — "Fiscal Interest Payments". data.iadb.org/dataset/latin-macro-watch-dataset.