The Caribbean Debt Tracker.

Why this exists.

Public debt figures for the Caribbean are scattered. The IMF World Economic Outlook database publishes one slice. Each national central bank or finance ministry publishes another, on different schedules and with different definitions. Caribbean Development Bank annual reports cover the picture once a year. There is no single, openly published, regularly refreshed resource that puts the regional fiscal picture on one page.

The Caribbean Debt Tracker is that resource. It is built from published sources only, cited line by line, refreshed each quarter against the latest WEO release and any intervening national updates. Free to read, free to cite.

What it covers.

Eleven economies, the ten standard CARICOM members tracked by the IMF plus Guyana, named separately because its hydrocarbon trajectory makes the regional average misleading without context.

• Barbados
• Jamaica
• Trinidad and Tobago
• The Bahamas
• Antigua and Barbuda
• Dominica
• Grenada
• Saint Lucia
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Guyana

For each economy, five metrics:

• Public debt to GDP. General government gross debt as a share of GDP, latest year and one-year change.
• Primary balance. Primary fiscal balance as a share of GDP. The lever that anchors a debt path.
• Real GDP growth. Latest annual growth and the IMF April-WEO projection for the year ahead.
• Fiscal anchor proximity. Where each country sits relative to its own announced medium-term debt or surplus target.
• IMF programme status. Active EFF, RSF, precautionary, surveillance only, or no engagement.

Methodology.

Public sources only. Primary inputs are the IMF World Economic Outlook database (refreshed twice a year, April and October), the IMF Article IV consultations and programme reviews where current, the CDB Caribbean Economic Review and Outlook annual report, and the published statistics of national central banks and finance ministries.

Where definitions differ across sources, the tracker uses the IMF series for cross-country comparability and footnotes the alternate national figure. Where a country has an announced medium-term fiscal anchor (as Barbados does under BERT 2026), proximity to that anchor is shown alongside the absolute level so a reader can read both the level and the trajectory.

Cadence.

Quarterly. Issue No. 01 lands in May 2026, refreshed against the April 2026 IMF World Economic Outlook release and the BERT 2026 update tabled in March. Each subsequent issue follows the WEO release calendar with one intervening update for major national publications.