The Caribbean Debt Tracker.

8 October 2026

Guyana 2026 growth moves from 16.2% to 20.8%. This is an update, and the earlier figure was right when published. The Ministry of Finance Mid-Year Report 2026, posted in mid-September 2026, revises the Government's own 2026 projection from the 16.2% in the Budget Speech to 20.8%, with non-oil growth at 10.2% (paragraph 3.2 and Appendix A1, printed pages 7 and 77). This file takes the latest WEO vintage for growth unless a more recent authoritative publication supersedes it, and a September national projection is more recent than the April WEO. The IMF 16.2% is kept as the second reading. The first half of 2026 grew 33.3% on the year, with the fifth oil production vessel, Errea Wittu, due to start in the final quarter.

8 October 2026

Recorded because the Guyana primary balance is still null, and this time a figure labelled primary balance was published. Appendix E1 of the Mid-Year Report 2026 prints a central government primary balance of minus G$195,746.4 million for 2026 revised. It is not the measure this tracker carries. The row equals revenue excluding Natural Resource Fund withdrawals, less non-interest current spending, and it leaves out both the oil fund transfer and all capital spending. The report prints no nominal GDP either, so turning it into a share of GDP would need a denominator from elsewhere. This tracker does not derive figures that are not printed, so the field waits for the IMF Executive Board to conclude the 2026 Article IV, which had not happened by 8 October 2026. Ten other rows were checked and did not move. The October 2026 World Economic Outlook is scheduled for 13 October and the Trinidad and Tobago budget for 12 October, both after this issue closed.

Issue No. 04 · 8 September 2026

Antigua and Barbuda is the correction this issue, and it is a year-discipline failure that survived three issues. The primary balance moves from a surplus of 4.9% of GDP to 1.4%. Both numbers are real and both come from the same table, Selected Economic and Financial Indicators in IMF Country Report 2026/097: 4.9 is the 2025 ESTIMATE column and 1.4 is the 2026 PROJECTION. The debt and growth figures on this row have been dated 2026 since Issue No. 01, so the row was reporting a 2025 primary balance beside a 2026 debt ratio. The Issue No. 02 sweep caught exactly this defect in Saint Vincent, Saint Kitts, the Bahamas and Trinidad, and missed Antigua. Readers who took 4.9% from Issues 01, 02 or 03 as this year's figure were reading last year's.

Issue No. 04 · 8 September 2026

Saint Lucia 2026 growth moves from 2.3% to 2.0%. The 2.3% was the projection in the Article IV press release of 14 January 2026 and it was superseded three months later by the April 2026 World Economic Outlook, which prints 2.0%. This file defines growth as the latest WEO vintage unless a MORE RECENT authoritative publication supersedes it, so a January figure should have given way to an April one at the last two refreshes and did not. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, publishing on 4 September 2026, is lower again at 1.2% and is carried as a second reading.

Issue No. 04 · 8 September 2026

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank published its Economic and Financial Review, June 2026 on 4 September 2026, with a separate report for each member. It is the first fresh official reading on all six ECCU economies in this tracker since February, and it revises 2025 outturns materially: Saint Kitts and Nevis 2025 primary deficit revised from 7.4% to 11.5% of GDP, Grenada 2025 primary deficit revised from 6.6% to 1.6%, Saint Vincent debt at end-2025 revised to 109.0% against the 110.3% its own Budget Address gave in February, and Saint Lucia debt at end-2025 revised to 76.7% against the 78.0% the ECCB itself printed in its Annual Review. No headline in this tracker takes an ECCB figure, because the headlines stay on IMF series for cross-country comparability, but seven second readings were added or updated from it and the Saint Lucia coverage note has been rewritten where it asserted the superseded 78.0%.

Issue No. 04 · 8 September 2026

Recorded because it is a non-change worth naming: the Guyana primary balance is still null. The Ministry of Finance Mid-Year Report 2026 had not been published as at 8 September 2026 (the 2025 edition appeared in September 2025, so it is due within weeks), and the Executive Board had not concluded the 2026 Article IV consultation whose staff mission ended on 31 July 2026. This tracker does not impute, so the field stays empty rather than carrying a number reconstructed from the Budget Speech aggregates. The Bahamas Direct Charge second reading moves from 71.5% at end-March 2026 to 70.7% at end-June 2026 on the Ministry of Finance Public Debt Statistical Bulletin of August 2026, the same series one quarter on. Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were checked against their primary sources and no figure moved.

Issue No. 04 · 24 September 2026

Barbados primary balance moves from a surplus of 4.2% of GDP to 3.5%. It is the same class of defect corrected in Antigua and Barbuda earlier in this issue, and it was found by checking all eleven rows. Both numbers are in Table 1 of IMF Press Release 26/219 (22 June 2026), whose fiscal columns run April to March. 4.2 is the FY2025/26 estimated outturn and 3.5 is the FY2026/27 projection. The debt and growth figures on this row are dated 2026, so the row was carrying the balance for the previous fiscal year. Debt and growth on the Barbados row did not move.

Issue No. 04 · 24 September 2026

The Bahamas debt moves from 71.9% to 70.2% of GDP, and the whole row now refers to FY2026/27, the fiscal year that began on 1 July 2026. On the evidence of Table 1 of IMF Country Report 2026/031, the IMF dates the Bahamas debt series by the year each fiscal year ends, so the 71.9% this tracker showed as 2026 was FY2025/26, and the primary surplus of 3.6% beside it was FY2025/26 too. Dominica, on the same July to June calendar, was already on FY2026/27. The two rows now follow one rule: each carries the fiscal year covering most of calendar 2026, and a July to June year, which splits 2026 six months and six, takes the year beginning in 2026. The IMF projects the Bahamas primary surplus at 3.6% for both years, so that figure is unchanged.

Issue No. 03 · 8 August 2026

Corrected within the day, and worth spelling out because the mistake is instructive. This issue initially held Dominica at the IMF primary balance projection of 1.0% for FY2026/27 on the stated ground that the Budget Address 2026/2027 does not print a primary balance. It does. Page 4 of the Address, read from the rendered page once the PDF became accessible, prints: the current Estimates project a surplus of 2.2 percent. The headline now carries 2.2%, the official figure, with the IMF 1.0% retained as a second reading. The earlier claim rested on the Address being unreachable by automated fetch, and absence of access was mistaken for absence of print. In the same pass, a Saint Lucia basis note citing an ECCB figure of 75.9% at December 2025 was removed: it could not be reproduced in any ECCB document, whose Annual Economic and Financial Review prints 78.0% for 2025.

Issue No. 03 · 8 August 2026

Grenada is the largest correction this Tracker has published. The 2026 central government primary balance moves from a deficit of 3.5% of GDP to a deficit of 7.9%. The earlier figure was an IMF staff projection. The new one is the Government of Grenada Medium-Term Fiscal Framework 2027-2029, published 7 August 2026, which projects minus EC$332.0 million against nominal GDP of EC$4,231.1 million. Grenada growth also moves from 3.2% to 3.3%. Readers who took the 3.5% figure from Issues 01 or 02 were reading a number less than half the one the authorities now publish.

Issue No. 03 · 8 August 2026

Barbados debt moves from 94.6% at end-FY2025/26 to 93.7% at end-June 2026, and the reference period moves forward a quarter with it. Separately, the Central Bank revised its own end-FY2025/26 figure from 94.6% to 94.8% between its April and July reviews, so the number this Tracker and the Bridgetown Brief both carried from April onwards was superseded twice over. The revision is a GDP denominator change, not a debt increase. Barbados 2026 growth moves from 2.2% to approximately 2%, the Bank having cut to the lower end of its 2 to 3 per cent range on 31 July. The Trinidad and Tobago note claiming growth of 0.8% in both 2025 and 2026 is corrected: the Central Statistical Office published a 2025 outturn of minus 0.5% on 29 July 2026.

Issue No. 03 · 8 August 2026

Recorded for transparency: Dominica presented its Budget Address 2026/2027 on 6 August 2026 and this Tracker did NOT change its primary balance. A figure near 2.2% of GDP can be reconstructed from the Address by netting its aggregates, but the Address does not print a primary balance, and this dataset does not impute or estimate. The published IMF figure of 1.0% stands until a primary balance is published directly. Seven of the eleven rows were checked against primary sources dated after 21 July and did not move. Their last-verified dates advance without any figure changing.

Issue No. 02 · 21 July 2026

Six primary balance figures were corrected. Jamaica had been carrying 2.3% of GDP against a source that does not exist in the row. Table 3J of the Fiscal Policy Paper FY2026/27 gives 0.5% for FY2026/27, and no year in that series holds 2.3%. Grenada had -3.1%, which could not be traced to any published table. The Article IV table gives -3.2% for 2025 and -3.5% for 2026, and Grenada growth moves from 3.1% to 3.2% on the same table. The remaining four, Saint Vincent, Saint Kitts, the Bahamas and Trinidad, were real figures taken from the most recent estimate column while the rest of the row was dated a year later. Each now takes the year its debt figure names. Saint Lucia lost an opening claim of a 2.6% deficit and 74.5% debt for 2024, which no cited source supports, and its primary balance moves from the FY2024 actual to the FY2026 projection.

Issue No. 02 · 21 July 2026

Six rows now declare the coverage basis on which their debt figure is measured, where previously the number was shown bare. Trinidad was the starkest: 67.8% central government against the IMF general government 84.2% for the same date, a sixteen-point gap a reader had no way to explain. Five source links were also repointed at the documents they name rather than at a publisher homepage or a country hub, and a claimed Guyana debt distress rating was removed as that rating is not issued for Guyana.

Issue No. 01 · 21 July 2026

Barbados was corrected from 102.5% to 94.6%. The row had been leading with gross public sector debt from IMF Country Report 25/153, on the reasoning that the BERT 60% anchor is defined on that measure. In practice the figure was a year stale and roughly eight points above every current published series, and it put this tracker in contradiction with the Bridgetown Brief, which has consistently cited the Central Bank of Barbados ratio. The row then carried that ratio, 94.6% at end-FY2025/26, an actual outturn (superseded at Issue No. 03, see the entries above). Note the Central Bank attributes part of the recent decline to a GDP rebasing rather than to repayment. In the same pass, eight other rows were moved to the IMF WEO 2026 estimates, which had superseded the 2024 and 2025 figures previously shown. Saint Kitts and Nevis crossed the 60% benchmark as a result, so ten of eleven economies now sit above it rather than nine.