Implicit Rate on Government Debt

The implicit interest rate on total public debt (Central Government) is defined as total interest payments divided by the average stock of total public debt over the previous period. This Latin Macro Watch indicator, published by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on data.iadb.org, gives researchers, policymakers and journalists a comparable measure of the effective cost of sovereign borrowing across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Coverage

The implicit rate on government debt is available for 14 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean at annual and quarterly frequency, covering 1990–2025. Values are expressed as a rate and in real terms, providing both nominal and inflation-adjusted views of the average effective cost of outstanding central-government debt.

Sources

The series is built from IDB internal calculations based on national finance ministries, central banks and statistical agencies, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Economía de Argentina, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico, Banco Central de Chile and Banco de la República de Colombia.

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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 the implicit rate on government debt measure? It is the effective average interest cost of central-government debt, calculated as total interest payments divided by the average stock of total public debt over the previous period. How many countries and time periods are covered? The indicator covers 14 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean at annual and quarterly frequency, spanning 1990 to 2025. What units are available? Values are provided as a rate and in real terms, giving both nominal and inflation-adjusted views of the effective cost of debt. What is this indicator typically used for? It is used to compare the effective cost of sovereign borrowing across countries and over time, and to analyze debt sustainability and interest burdens in fiscal and macroeconomic research. Where does the data come from? The series is compiled from IDB internal calculations based on national finance ministries, central banks and statistical agencies, including Tesouro Nacional do Brasil, Ministerio de Economía de Argentina, Ministerio de Hacienda de Mexico and Banco Central de Chile. How do I cite this indicator? Cite as: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Latin Macro Watch — "Implicit Rate on Government Debt". data.iadb.org/dataset/latin-macro-watch-dataset.