IMF International Financial Statistics (IFS)

IMF International Financial Statistics (IFS) is a cross-country database of macroeconomic and external-sector series published by the International Monetary Fund: balance of payments, international reserves, exchange rates, monetary and financial accounts, prices, and national accounts, for most member countries. The data is free and public. Used in, for example, Kremens, Martin & Varela, where it supplies each country’s current account balance and capital inflows, both scaled by GDP.

• Cost: free, public.
• API key: none required for the DataMapper API or the SDMX data portal.
• Coverage: annual, quarterly, and monthly series across most IMF member countries; external-sector and macro series, many from the 1940s-1960s onward depending on country and indicator.
• Home: https://www.imf.org/en/Data

Access

Two no-key paths reach IMF data. The simplest is the DataMapper API, which returns a single indicator across all countries as JSON:

# Current account balance, percent of GDP, all countries, no key
curl -sL \
  "https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/api/v1/BCA_NGDPD?periods=2019" \
  -o bca_ngdpd.json
# List every available indicator and its code/units:
curl -sL "https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/api/v1/indicators" -o indicators.json

The JSON is keyed values -> <indicator> -> <ISO3 country> -> <year> -> value. The indicator catalogue (/indicators) gives each code’s label and unit, so resolve the code you need there first (for example BCA_NGDPD is current account balance as a percent of GDP).

For the full IFS database, series-level dimensions, and quarterly or monthly frequencies, use the IMF data portal (SDMX REST) at https://data.imf.org. Browse the dataset, select the country, indicator, and frequency dimensions, and either download the CSV or call the SDMX endpoint. The DataMapper draws a curated subset of indicators across IMF databases; the SDMX portal exposes the IFS dataflow in full.

Load in Python

import requests, pandas as pd

j = requests.get(
    "https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/api/v1/BCA_NGDPD",
    params={"periods": ",".join(str(y) for y in range(2010, 2020))},
    timeout=60,
).json()

# values -> indicator -> country (ISO3) -> {year: value}
rows = [
    {"iso3": c, "year": int(y), "bca_ngdpd": v}
    for c, series in j["values"]["BCA_NGDPD"].items()
    for y, v in series.items()
]
df = pd.DataFrame(rows)

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

• The IMF data portal moved, and the legacy SDMX endpoint is being retired. The old dataservices.imf.org/REST/SDMX_JSON.svc/ JSON service is unreliable and on the way out; the current portal is data.imf.org. Pin your access path and re-check it, rather than hardcoding the legacy host.
• Indicator codes are not interchangeable across IMF databases. The same concept (say, current account) appears under different codes in IFS, BOP, and WEO, in different units (level in USD, percent of GDP, domestic currency). Resolve the exact code and unit from /indicators before pulling, and do not assume two codes that read alike are the same series.
• DataMapper is a curated subset, not all of IFS. If an indicator you need is missing from /indicators, it may still exist in the full IFS dataflow on the SDMX portal. Absence from DataMapper is not absence from IFS.
• Country coverage and start dates vary by indicator. A series can begin decades later for one country than another, and some country-years are simply missing. Do not read a gap as a zero; carry it as missing.
• Vintages get revised. External-sector and national-accounts figures are revised across releases. Record the access date, and for reproducibility note the database and the period you pulled, since a later pull can differ.
• BPM5 versus BPM6 balance-of-payments definitions. External-sector series shifted from the fifth to the sixth Balance of Payments Manual; the definitions and signs are not identical. Check which manual a series uses before splicing old and new vintages.

Selected IFS / external-sector indicators

Indicator	DataMapper code	Unit
Current account balance, percent of GDP	BCA_NGDPD	percent of GDP
Current account balance, USD	BCA	billions USD
Gross national savings, percent of GDP	NGSD_NGDP	percent of GDP
Total investment, percent of GDP	NID_NGDP	percent of GDP

Confirm the exact code, label, and unit against the live /indicators catalogue before use; the set above is illustrative, not the full IFS.

Citation

Cite the IMF, the database (International Financial Statistics), the indicator and country, the URL, and the access date, for example: International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics, current account balance (percent of GDP), retrieved from https://www.imf.org/en/Data, accessed YYYY-MM-DD. Record the indicator code and frequency so the pull is reproducible.