imfweo

imfweo is an R package to access and analyze the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) publications. WEO provides comprehensive analysis and forecasts of the global economy and is published twice a year - typically in April and October.

The package is designed to work seamlessly with World Bank’s International Debt Statistics (IDS) and World Development Indicators (WDI) provided through the wbids and wbwdi package, respectively. It follows the principles of the EconDataverse.

This package is a product of Teal Insights and not sponsored by or affiliated with the IMF in any way, except for the use of the WEO data.

💡 This package currently does not use the IMF Data API for several reasons: (i) the API’s SDMX format is complex and difficult to parse; (ii) leveraging the rsdmx package would require releasing imfweo under the GPL license; and (iii) it’s unclear whether the API provides access to historical WEO publications.

Installation

You can install imfweo from CRAN via:

install.packages("imfweo")

You can install the development version of imfweo from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("teal-insights/r-imfweo")

Usage

The main function weo_get() provides a simple interface to download data from the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) publication:

library(imfweo)

weo_get()
#> # A tibble: 361,733 × 7
#>    entity_name entity_id series_name                 units series_id  year value
#>    <chr>       <chr>     <chr>                       <chr> <chr>     <int> <dbl>
#>  1 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1980 -56.3
#>  2 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1981 -82.3
#>  3 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1982 -91.9
#>  4 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1983 -76.7
#>  5 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1984 -68.7
#>  6 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1985 -64.3
#>  7 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1986 -67.4
#>  8 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1987 -64.8
#>  9 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1988 -58.7
#> 10 World       001       Current account balance (c… US d… BCA        1989 -84.7
#> # ℹ 361,723 more rows

Note: On the first run of each R session, the function may take a few seconds to execute as the full publication is downloaded. The data is put into a cache, which is reset whenever your session restarts.

The set of known publications is maintained as a lookup table inside the package. Since the WEO database moved to the IMF Data portal with the October 2025 release, each vintage sits behind an opaque per-vintage identifier that cannot be derived from the year and release, so the latest publication can no longer be detected online. A new release becomes available after a package update.

To fetch data from a specific publication, or to filter by country, indicator, or time range, you can use the available parameters:

weo_get(
  entities = c("USA", "GBR", "DEU"),
  series = "NGDP_RPCH",
  start_year = 2015,
  end_year = 2020,
  year = 2023,
  release = "Spring"
)
#> # A tibble: 18 × 7
#>    entity_name    entity_id series_name            units series_id  year   value
#>    <chr>          <chr>     <chr>                  <chr> <chr>     <int>   <dbl>
#>  1 Germany        DEU       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2015   1.49 
#>  2 Germany        DEU       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2016   2.23 
#>  3 Germany        DEU       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2017   2.68 
#>  4 Germany        DEU       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2018   0.984
#>  5 Germany        DEU       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2019   1.05 
#>  6 Germany        DEU       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2020  -3.69 
#>  7 United Kingdom GBR       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2015   2.39 
#>  8 United Kingdom GBR       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2016   2.16 
#>  9 United Kingdom GBR       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2017   2.44 
#> 10 United Kingdom GBR       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2018   1.70 
#> 11 United Kingdom GBR       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2019   1.60 
#> 12 United Kingdom GBR       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2020 -11.0  
#> 13 United States  USA       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2015   2.71 
#> 14 United States  USA       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2016   1.67 
#> 15 United States  USA       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2017   2.24 
#> 16 United States  USA       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2018   2.94 
#> 17 United States  USA       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2019   2.30 
#> 18 United States  USA       Gross domestic produc… Perc… NGDP_RPCH  2020  -2.77

Even when filtering, the full dataset for the selected publication must be downloaded, as the WEO data is distributed in Excel format.

To explore available publications:

weo_list_publications()
#> # A tibble: 39 × 3
#>     year release month  
#>    <int> <chr>   <chr>  
#>  1  2007 Spring  April  
#>  2  2007 Fall    October
#>  3  2008 Spring  April  
#>  4  2008 Fall    October
#>  5  2009 Spring  April  
#>  6  2009 Fall    October
#>  7  2010 Spring  April  
#>  8  2010 Fall    October
#>  9  2011 Spring  April  
#> 10  2011 Fall    October
#> # ℹ 29 more rows

To list the available entities (countries or country groups) for the latest publication:

weo_get_entities()
#> # A tibble: 210 × 2
#>    entity_id entity_name                     
#>    <chr>     <chr>                           
#>  1 510       ASEAN-5                         
#>  2 110       Advanced Economies              
#>  3 AFG       Afghanistan, Islamic Republic of
#>  4 ALB       Albania                         
#>  5 DZA       Algeria                         
#>  6 AND       Andorra, Principality of        
#>  7 AGO       Angola                          
#>  8 ATG       Antigua and Barbuda             
#>  9 ARG       Argentina                       
#> 10 ARM       Armenia, Republic of            
#> # ℹ 200 more rows

To list the available data series:

weo_get_series()
#> # A tibble: 145 × 3
#>    series_id series_name                                                   units
#>    <chr>     <chr>                                                         <chr>
#>  1 BCA       Current account balance (credit less debit), US dollar        US d…
#>  2 BCA_NGDPD Current account balance (credit less debit), Percent of GDP   Perc…
#>  3 BF        Financial account balance (assets less liabilities), US doll… US d…
#>  4 BFD       Direct investment, Net (assets minus liabilities), US dollar  US d…
#>  5 BFF       Financial derivatives and employee stock options, Net (asset… US d…
#>  6 BFO       Other investment, Net (assets minus liabilities), US dollar   US d…
#>  7 BFP       Portfolio investment, Net (assets minus liabilities), US dol… US d…
#>  8 BFRA      Change in reserve assets, Net (assets minus liabilities), US… US d…
#>  9 BM        Imports of goods and services, US dollar                      US d…
#> 10 BX        Exports of goods and services, US dollar                      US d…
#> # ℹ 135 more rows

Contributing

Contributions to imfweo are welcome! If you’d like to contribute, please follow these steps:

1. Create an issue: Before making changes, create an issue describing the bug or feature you’re addressing.
2. Fork the repository: After receiving supportive feedback from the package authors, fork the repository to your GitHub account.
3. Create a branch: Create a branch for your changes with a descriptive name.
4. Make your changes: Implement your bug fix or feature.
5. Test your changes: Run tests to ensure your changes don’t break existing functionality.
6. Submit a pull request: Push your changes to your fork and submit a pull request to the main repository.