Fiscal Expenditure

Fiscal Expenditure is a Latin Macro Watch indicator from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that measures total central government spending, including both primary expenditures (such as wages, subsidies and public investment) and interest payments on public debt. It reflects the full scope of government outlays; precise coverage and classification may vary across countries, so country-specific notes should be consulted. For some economies it follows the Administración Pública Nacional perimeter, compiled from the Ahorro-Inversión-Financiamiento account on a cash basis. The series helps analysts, policymakers and researchers monitor public finances across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Coverage

The indicator covers 23 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 and statistics agencies, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico, Ministerio de Economía de Argentina and Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito Público 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 Expenditure measure? It measures total central government spending, combining primary expenditures such as wages, subsidies and public investment with interest payments on public debt. How many countries and which frequencies and period are covered? The indicator covers 23 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 and statistics agencies, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico and Ministerio de Economía de Argentina. What are typical uses of this indicator? It is used for fiscal policy analysis, assessing government size and spending pressure, cross-country comparison and macroeconomic and academic research across the region. How do I cite this indicator? Cite it as: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin Macro Watch — "Fiscal Expenditure". data.iadb.org/dataset/latin-macro-watch-dataset.