Radar Perene / Archive / science

Tesouro Transparente: public debt data, open and ready for reproduction

◦ Index methodology v2.2 (working papers with DOI). See the methodology.

Science

Public debt is Brazil's most cited and least consulted macroeconomic figure. Everyone has an opinion about it; almost no one has opened the file where it lives. The file exists, is public, and is more detailed than the debate that cites it: not just how much is owed, but to whom, at what cost, with what maturities and tied to which indexers — month by month, at a depth that turns the generic phrase "the debt went up" into an entire family of testable questions.

Tesouro Transparente is the National Treasury's open data portal: it gathers datasets, reports and series on the federal public debt, the central government's accounts, transfers and federal assets — for free download, with data dictionaries and regular updates.

For this trail, the portal matters for one specific reason: public debt is the territory where the distance between opinion and data is the costliest in the Brazilian debate — and where open data shortens it without asking permission.

What is inside: the anatomy, not just the total

The dataset that best summarizes the portal is the stock of the Federal Public Debt, the monthly base that accompanies the Monthly Debt Report. The house downloaded it and describes it here in broad strokes, as an example of what the reader finds. The file does not carry one number — it carries the anatomy: the stock opened by security and by indexer (the fixed-rate share, the share tied to the Selic, the share tied to price indices, the FX-linked share), the average maturities, the redemption profile, the split between domestic and external debt and the average cost of the stock. Each of those dimensions is a research question in raw state: how the weight of indexers shifts across interest-rate regimes; what happens to average maturity in stress years; what fraction of the debt matures within the following twelve months of each era.

Alongside the stock live the auction datasets (what was issued, when and at what rate), the Tesouro Direto series and the central government's accounts. The material comes in open formats, with a dictionary — and the dictionary's existence deserves the record, because it is what separates open data from a file dumped on the internet.

The archive's episode: when the stock became an alarm

The house's archive holds a case in which exactly this data carried the essay. In August 2015, the statistical monitoring flagged public debt as one of three series in rare territory in the same month — and the text noted what distinguishes an extreme in a stock series: debt does not jump on mood; it accumulates. In numbers: the debt reached 62.97% of GDP, one of the largest departures from its own history ever recorded in the archive — the episode is in "Public debt in rare anomaly".

The division of labor between the public sources becomes visible in that example, and it is worth spelling out because it confuses even experienced readers: the consolidated total as a share of GDP — the 62.97% — is a fiscal statistic compiled by the Central Bank, available in the SGS, treated in this trail's first article. The anatomy of that stock — how much was fixed-rate, how much tied to the Selic, with what maturities — is what lives in Tesouro Transparente. The aggregate says something changed; the composition is where one researches what. A serious study of that August would use both houses, citing each for its own dataset.

Reproduction as the default

This article's subtitle — "ready for reproduction" — describes the property that matters for research. A study of Brazilian debt that cites the portal's dataset, with the consultation date, can be checked by any reader against the same files: same source, same cut, same result or the divergence exposed. That is the reproducibility ruler discussed in its own article in this section — and public debt is a rare case in which it can be met entirely with official data, with no paid provider along the way.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between the Federal Public Debt and the general government gross debt?

The DPF is the federal government's debt in securities, managed by the Treasury; the general government gross debt (DBGG) also consolidates states and municipalities and is compiled by the Central Bank. The share of GDP cited in the news is usually the DBGG; the detailed anatomy in Tesouro Transparente is the DPF.

Do the data require registration or payment?

No. Open download, common formats, data dictionaries published alongside.

How often is the stock updated?

Debt tracking is monthly, with the Monthly Debt Report. Complementary series and datasets have their own calendars, indicated on the portal.

Does it serve for studying Tesouro Direto?

Yes — the program that sells government securities to individuals has its own datasets on the portal, with historical prices, rates and stocks, frequently used in research on the Brazilian retail investor.

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Continue the trail: from the sovereign debtor to the market's sheriff — what the CVM publishes beyond what it polices: CVM open data →

House reading: today's reading is in the Diário; the 2015 alarm and its neighbors, in the Atlas.

Turning one of these datasets into a testable variable for a concrete question is bench work — the house does it on commission.