Costa Rica

Economic scale

Population, real GDP per capita, and total-factor productivity from the Penn World Table, 1950–2023. A scale reference for every other section on this page, not a financial-risk series in its own right.

Source: Penn World Table 11.0 (Feenstra, Inklaar and Timmer 2015). License: CC BY 4.0. Methodology

9 episodes between 1828 and 1996. Consecutive crisis years are merged into episodes (gaps of up to two years bridged); each links to its episode page.

• 1828–1840
• 1874–1885
• 1895–1897
• 1901–1911
• 1920–1922
• 1932–1952
• 1962
• 1974
• 1981–1996

Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 | Reinhart-Rogoff (HBS BFFS) | Laeven & Valencia (2020, 2026) | ECB/ESRB Financial Crises Database. License: non-commercial research (inherits GMD / JST); cite all five chronologies. Methodology

Financial depth and soundness

Depth (private credit, deposits) and soundness (Z-score, nonperforming loans, concentration) from the World Bank GFDD. GFDD values end in 2021 (the dataset’s last release year); a flat recent tail is the data stopping, not the sector standing still.

Source: World Bank Global Financial Development Database (Sep 2022). License: CC BY 4.0. Values end 2021 (GFDD's last release year). Methodology

The World Bank GFDD soundness series above end in 2021. The IMF Financial Soundness Indicators are current: annual through 2025. These deposit-taker core indicators cover capital adequacy (regulatory and Tier 1 capital to risk-weighted assets), asset quality (nonperforming loans), earnings (return on assets and equity), and liquidity (liquid assets to total assets). Each panel is a standalone series with its own scale; the headline is the latest value and its year.

Source: IMF Financial Soundness Indicators (FSI). License: IMF, free with "Source: IMF, Financial Soundness Indicators" attribution. Deposit-taker core set; coverage varies by indicator and year. Methodology

Financial inclusion

How much of the adult population (age 15+) is inside the financial system, from the World Bank Global Findex 2025: account ownership, digital payments, and formal saving and borrowing. Findex is a survey run in waves (2011, 2014, 2017, 2021, 2024), so each card is a wave sparkline with the latest reading and the change since the first wave available for Costa Rica.

Source: World Bank Global Findex Database 2025. License: CC BY 4.0. Survey waves; percent of adults age 15+. Methodology

Costa Rica is not in the BIS credit-statistics reporting set (a fixed group of around 44 advanced and major emerging economies), so no credit-to-GDP gap, debt-service ratio, or property-price series is available here.

Source: BIS credit and debt-service statistics | BIS residential property prices. License: free with "Source: BIS" attribution. Methodology

Policy rate and exchange rate

Costa Rica is in neither the BIS central-bank policy-rate set (48 economies) nor the BIS real broad effective-exchange-rate set (63 economies), so no policy-rate or exchange-rate series is available here.

Source: BIS central bank policy rates | BIS effective exchange rates. License: free with "Source: BIS" attribution. Methodology

External accounts

Costa Rica’s external position: the current-account balance (IMF, percent of GDP), the net international investment position and total official reserves (both shown as US-dollar levels, in billions, because the IMF IIP and World Bank reserve series carry dollar values rather than ratios), the degree of capital-account openness (the Chinn-Ito index, 0 closed to 1 open), and remittance inflows. A positive current account or net-IIP reading is a surplus/creditor position; a negative one is a deficit/debtor position. Each panel appears only where Costa Rica has that series.

International debt securities

Outstanding international debt securities issued by Costa Rica’s residents, by issuer sector, from the BIS: bonds and notes placed outside the home market (residence basis), in US-dollar billions. These are international issues only: domestic-market issuance is excluded, so this is not a country’s total debt-securities outstanding and is far smaller than its whole bond market. “All issuers” is the total; the government, financial-corporation and non-financial-corporation lines are its components, each shown only where the BIS reports it.

Source: BIS debt securities statistics (international debt securities). License: free with "Source: BIS" attribution. International issues only (residence basis); domestic issuance excluded. Quarterly, 1978-Q1 to 2026-Q1. Methodology

Latest government debt 60.2% of GDP (2024, General govt (IMF GDD)). Peak 68.1% in 2021. This is below the 80.7% median at which 2000+ sovereign crises began (a comparison, not a prediction).

Source: IMF Global Debt Database | IMF World Economic Outlook. License: IMF, free with "Source: IMF" attribution. Methodology

Reading this profile

• This page composes existing FinObservatory layers; it introduces no new data. Every figure is reproducible from the source cited in its section. See the methodology for the composition and each source’s coverage and staleness.
• The layers stop at different dates: the World Bank GFDD depth and soundness series end 2021, but the IMF FSI soundness panel is current (annual through 2024–2025 where reported); the Global Findex inclusion series are surveyed in waves and reach 2024; the crisis chronologies end around 2016–2021; IMF debt runs to 2024; the Penn World Table runs 1950–2023; and the BIS statistics are the most current (credit through 2025, residential property to 2026Q1, and the policy rate and effective exchange rate into 2026 where reported). The external accounts reach 2025 (IMF balance-of-payments and reserves), 2024 (remittance inflows) and 2023 (capital-account openness). A quiet recent tail in one section can simply be where that source stops.
• Sections are shown only where Costa Rica has data. An absent section means the underlying dataset does not cover this country, not that the value is zero.