Four indicators from the IMF's World Economic Outlook (WEO) database of October 2026, laid out tidy. One row is one entity in one year, and each variable has its own column. An entity is one of 197 countries or one of 13 IMF country groups, and the years run from 2000 to 2031, so the panel has 6,720 rows.
Format
A tibble with 6,720 rows and 9 variables:
- code
chr The entity's code. A country has its three-letter ISO code (the IMF uses
KOSfor Kosovo andWBGfor West Bank and Gaza); an IMF group has a code that starts with G and a digit or an X, such asG110for Advanced Economies.- name
chr The entity's name, as the IMF writes it, such as "Egypt, Arab Republic of".
- year
int The year, 2000 to 2031.
- gross_debt
dbl Gross debt of the general government, everything it owes, in percent of GDP (the IMF's
GGXWDG_NGDP).- primary_balance
dbl The primary balance: revenue minus spending, with interest left out on both sides, in percent of GDP (
GGXONLB_NGDP). Negative means a deficit.- overall_balance
dbl The overall balance: revenue minus all spending, interest included, in percent of GDP (
GGXCNL_NGDP). Negative means a deficit.- gdp_usd_bn
dbl GDP at current prices, in billions of US dollars (
NGDPD).- latest_actual
int The last year with actual fiscal data; later years are IMF estimates or projections. Missing (
NA) for 12 of the 13 IMF groups.- fiscal_year
chr The months of the year the WEO shows the fiscal numbers in: "January/December" for most countries, and others such as "July/June" for Pakistan. Missing for 12 of the 13 IMF groups.
Source
International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database,
October 2026, https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:WEO. Built by
data-raw/weo.R from data-raw/source/weo_panel.csv, which
data-raw/weo_panel.R makes from data-raw/source/weo_2026oct_extract.csv,
an extract of the IMF's workbook WEOOct2026all.xlsx.
Details
The WEO mixes actual data and IMF projections in one row. latest_actual
marks where the actual data stop. For most countries the fiscal numbers are
actual through 2025, and from 2026 on almost every value is an IMF
projection.
Net interest is not a column. It is one line of arithmetic,
primary_balance - overall_balance: the interest the government pays minus
the interest it receives, in percent of GDP. For Japan in 2025 that is
-0.511 minus -0.709, which is 0.198.
To tell a group from a country, look at the code. An IMF group's code
starts with G and then a digit or an X (G110); a country's second
character is a letter (Ghana is GHA).
Vintage
The IMF's World Economic Outlook database of October 2026. This table is a frozen snapshot of that release: it does not change when the IMF publishes a new WEO or revises these numbers.
Transformations
The IMF's workbook WEOOct2026all.xlsx went through two steps. First, an
extract stacked its Countries and Country Groups sheets, kept 13 of 44
indicators, the years 2000 to 2031 and 9 of 29 descriptive columns, and wrote
each number in its shortest form. Second, data-raw/weo_panel.R kept the four
indicators here, gave them plain names, reshaped them to one row per entity and
year, and rounded them to three decimals. It also added two columns from the
IMF's labels. fiscal_year is the IMF's own label. latest_actual turns the
IMF's label, such as FY2024/25, into one calendar year, following the rule in
the IMF's notes for that country.
Credit
Print this line under every chart you make from these data:
Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, October 2026, https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:WEO. Country groups: The World Bank: World Development Indicators: country and lending groups (CC BY 4.0). Net interest is the primary balance minus the overall balance, calculated for this workshop.
Drop the second sentence if your chart uses no World Bank groups, and the third if it shows no net interest.
Terms of use
The package's MIT license does not cover these data. They are under the special
terms for statistical data on the IMF's Copyright and Usage page,
https://www.imf.org/en/About/copyright-and-terms (effective 11 October 2024,
read on 6 November 2026), which name the World Economic Outlook database. You
may download, extract, copy, build on, publish and distribute the data if you
credit the IMF in the form above, do not alter the data in a way that
intentionally affects their nature or accuracy, and say so next to the credit
when you materially transform them. If you pass the data on, make reasonable
efforts to tell your users about these terms. The IMF gives no warranty. For any
potential commercial reuse, ask copyright@imf.org first. The IMF's general
terms still apply where the data terms are silent: imply no endorsement, and do
not use its content to train large language models without its explicit
permission. See system.file("LICENSE-data.md", package = "saisdata").
This package is not an official IMF or World Bank product.
See also
weo_groups for the IMF's own layout of its two big groups; wb_groups to add the World Bank's income levels and regions.
Examples
# Rows, then columns
dim(weo)
#> [1] 6720 9
# The first six rows
head(weo)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 9
#> code name year gross_debt primary_balance overall_balance gdp_usd_bn
#> <chr> <chr> <int> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 AND Andorra, Pr… 2000 NA NA NA 1.43
#> 2 AND Andorra, Pr… 2001 15.8 1.48 0.658 1.55
#> 3 AND Andorra, Pr… 2002 15.3 1.68 0.978 1.76
#> 4 AND Andorra, Pr… 2003 15.2 2.27 1.76 2.36
#> 5 AND Andorra, Pr… 2004 15.1 2.43 1.86 2.90
#> 6 AND Andorra, Pr… 2005 14.8 0.268 -0.081 3.16
#> # ℹ 2 more variables: latest_actual <int>, fiscal_year <chr>
# Kenya since 2020, with its net interest bill in percent of GDP
kenya <- subset(weo, code == "KEN" & year >= 2020 & year <= 2025)
kenya$net_interest <- kenya$primary_balance - kenya$overall_balance
kenya[, c("year", "gross_debt", "net_interest")]
#> # A tibble: 6 × 3
#> year gross_debt net_interest
#> <int> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 2020 68.0 3.93
#> 2 2021 68.2 4.09
#> 3 2022 67.8 4.37
#> 4 2023 73.4 4.79
#> 5 2024 67.3 5.25
#> 6 2025 71.3 5.45