Nicaragua

Nicaragua: Thin Fiscal Buffers, Deep Governance Erosion

Nicaragua's economy stood at $19.69 billion in gross domestic product for 2024, per World Bank WDI figures, with per-capita output of $2,847.54 the same year and a population of 6,916,140. Government debt equaled 33.2 percent of GDP in IMF WEO figures for 2026, a moderate load by regional standards, while reserves held by the central bank reached $8.32 billion according to IMF IFS data for 2025.

Military posture

SIPRI's 2025 Milex data put Nicaraguan defense spending at $116.37 million, equivalent to 0.565 percent of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP series for that year — a figure drawn from SIPRI's accounting rather than the World Bank GDP series cited above. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset recorded 12,000 active-duty personnel in 2022, and assigned Nicaragua a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 0.00038106833 for the same year, a measure that aggregates demographic, industrial and military weight into a single index of relative state power.

Governance

V-Dem v15's 2025 scores depict a political system with little competitive content: an electoral democracy index of 0.151 and a liberal democracy index of just 0.019. The state capacity index stood at 0.008 for the same year, close to the index's floor, pointing to acute constraints on the state's ability to implement policy and enforce rules uniformly.

Energy

Primary energy consumption totaled 0.0767 exajoules in 2023, per Our World in Data's energy series, and electricity generation reached 4.52 terawatt-hours in 2024. Both oil and gas production were recorded at zero terawatt-hours in Our World in Data's series, but that reading carries a 2016 date, well before most other figures in this bundle — a gap, not a confirmed current snapshot of zero output.

Data gaps

The oil and gas production figures carry a 2016 date, markedly older than the rest of this bundle, and should not be read as current. No other reserves or debt series beyond the IMF figures cited above appear in this bundle.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy).