The Bank of Spain, in collaboration with the Executive Secretariat of the Central American Monetary Council (SECMCA), estimates Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) indices for the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.
The Bank of Spain, in collaboration with the Executive Secretariat of the Central American Monetary Council (SECMCA), estimates Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) indices for the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.
These indices are constructed specifically for each country, combining local and regional sources. They are validated through a narrative approach, which ensures that variations in the indices accurately reflect relevant events in terms of economic policy.
The methodological details can be found in an article published in the Latin American Journal of Central Banking (Diakonova, Ghirelli, and Quiñónez, 2025
), which demonstrates that an increase in the EPU indices translates into a decrease in economic activity, based on evidence from a Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) model.
The indices are compiled on a monthly basis and are updated and published quarterly on this website. These indices will continue to be updated quarterly on this site, and they can be downloaded via this link 
(149 KB)
To understand why these indicators are useful for economic policy, one can consult the document “On the Importance and Usefulness of Uncertainty Indicators” available at this link 
(51 KB).
