Country profile / LCA
Saint Lucia
One canonical page for Saint Lucia’s financial profile, composed from the crisis atlas, IMF sovereign-debt data, the World Bank GFDD and Global Findex, the BIS credit, policy-rate and exchange-rate statistics, the external accounts (IMF balance of payments and international investment position, official reserves, capital-account openness and remittances), and the Penn World Table’s population and GDP scale. Each section links to its dedicated module and cites its own primary source; sections appear only where Saint Lucia has data.
Cross-border banking exposure: how much BIS-reporting banks lend to Saint Lucia.
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
Crisis history
No banking, currency, or sovereign-debt crisis is recorded for Saint Lucia in the five chronologies (Global Macro Database, Reinhart-Rogoff, Laeven-Valencia, JST, ECB/ESRB).
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
Financial development (IMF FD index)
The IMF’s summary reading of the GFDD-style raw series above: a 0-to-1 composite of how deep, accessible and efficient the financial system is, split into a financial-institutions pillar (banks, insurers, funds) and a financial-markets pillar (stock and bond markets). Methodology: Svirydzenka (2016), IMF WP/16/5. The IMF’s served series end in 2020; a flat recent tail is the data stopping, not the system standing still. The six depth/access/efficiency subindices are in the underlying dataset but not charted here.
Source: IMF Financial Development Index (IMF.MCM:FDI) | Svirydzenka (2016), IMF Working Paper WP/16/5. License: IMF, public open data with "Source: IMF, Financial Development Index" attribution. 0-1 scale; served values end 2020 (183 economies). Methodology
Current soundness (IMF FSI)
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
Saint Lucia is not surveyed in the World Bank Global Findex (162 economies covered), so no financial-inclusion series is available here.
Source: World Bank Global Findex Database 2025. License: CC BY 4.0. Survey waves; percent of adults age 15+. Methodology
Credit cycle
Saint Lucia 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
Saint Lucia 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
Saint Lucia’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 Saint Lucia has that series.
Remittance inflows are shown as external-flow context (household income received from abroad), not a FinObservatory risk score.
Source: IMF Balance of Payments and IIP Statistics | World Bank, Total reserves (FI.RES.TOTL.CD). License: IMF and World Bank, free with attribution ("Source: IMF"; World Bank reserves CC BY 4.0). Current account and net IIP: IMF BOP/IIP, to 2025. Reserves: World Bank FI.RES.TOTL.CD, to 2025. Methodology
Source: Chinn-Ito index of capital-account openness (Chinn and Ito 2006). License: research use with citation only (Chinn-Ito); not for commercial redistribution. Capital-account openness ends 2023. Methodology
Source: World Bank / KNOMAD Migration and Remittances Data. License: CC BY 4.0 (World Bank / KNOMAD). Remittance inflows end 2024; shown as context, not a risk score. Methodology
International debt securities
Outstanding international debt securities issued by Saint Lucia’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, 2011-Q1 to 2026-Q1. Methodology
Income and wealth inequality
Cross-country inequality →How concentrated Saint Lucia’s income and wealth are. Top shares come from WID.world on equal-split adults (each adult in a couple assigned half the couple’s total); income (a flow) and wealth (a stock) are shown as distinct measures and never combined into one figure. The Gini coefficients are survey-based, on a 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (maximal concentration) scale: the World Bank PIP survey Gini and, where covered, the OECD disposable-income (post-tax, post-transfer) Gini. Each reading shows its year and, where a cross-country distribution exists, where Saint Lucia sits among reporting economies. WID extends its most recent years by extrapolation, so a latest reading is an estimate.
Source: WID.world (World Inequality Database) | World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform | OECD Income Distribution Database. License: WID.world and OECD IDD: display-with-attribution (owner no-redistribution ruling); World Bank PIP: CC BY 4.0. Top shares on equal-split adults; recent WID years are extrapolated. Ginis are survey-based and measure a different object from the fiscal top shares. Methodology
Sovereign debt
Full debt trajectory →Latest government debt 74.8% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). Peak 100.8% in 2020. 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 peer line on a card (“N economies report; median…”) places this country’s latest reading among every reporting economy’s own latest reading for the same indicator, under the same filters. Latest years differ where reporting lags. It is a descriptive position (a count and a median), not a score; for indicators where lower is safer, such as nonperforming loans, a high position is not a good one.
- The layers stop at different dates: the World Bank GFDD depth and soundness series end 2021 and the IMF Financial Development Index ends 2020, 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 Saint Lucia has data. An absent section means the underlying dataset does not cover this country, not that the value is zero.
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