The Inter-American Development Bank has cautioned that a historical analysis grouping El Salvador among Latin America's most financially vulnerable economies should not be read as an assessment of present macroeconomic conditions, after the finding was reported by local media without the bank's methodological caveat.

The clarification accompanies the IDB's 2026 Latin America and Caribbean Macroeconomic Report, which draws primarily on data from 1990 to 2019 and uses JP Morgan's Emerging Markets Bond Index to measure how countries' borrowing costs have responded to external shocks over time. A footnote to the relevant section states that the results "should not be interpreted as an assessment of current economic fundamentals," warning that the methodology covers periods of high volatility and elevated country risk and "conceals considerable heterogeneity among countries and over time."

Within that historical framework, the report places El Salvador fourth among the region's more vulnerable economies, alongside Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, countries that exhibited weaker macro-financial frameworks during the periods under review. The bank noted that recent improvements in Argentina and El Salvador’s fundamentals were among the changes not captured by the dataset.

At the other end of the spectrum, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay are identified as economies that historically demonstrated solid macro-financial frameworks and more resilient EMBI responses.

The IDB said macroeconomic credibility had historically been essential for maintaining resilience against global financial cycles, with investor confidence underpinning continued market access. Countries with weaker historical profiles, it found, tended to face harder adjustments when global risk appetite tightened, often being pushed into procyclical fiscal tightening at the bottom of the cycle.

The report also found that inflation dynamics differed between the two groups, with lower-vulnerability economies historically maintaining contained price pressures while higher-risk countries experienced disinflation driven by weakening domestic demand rather than sound monetary policy.