Our Method
Document Collection
Our collection currently focuses on two primary categories of debt instruments, loans and tradable securities. In the pilot phase, we have collected documents entered into by central government borrowers beginning in 2015.
Loans
We organize loan documents by creditor type:
- Bilateral (national governments, including entities owned or controlled by national governments, using OECD methodology)
- Multilateral, Regional, or Plurilateral Lenders (international organizations comprising two or more governments)
- Private (including commercial banks and other entities not owned or controlled by governments)
The documentation bank currently features two loan structures:
- Term Loan: A committed facility for borrowing a lump sum with an agreed repayment schedule. Once repaid, amounts cannot be re-borrowed.
- Revolving Facility: A facility allowing borrowers to draw and repay amounts up to the commitment limit during the term of the facility (subject to suspension or cancellation). Amounts repaid may be re-borrowed.
In addition, we upload and tag General Terms and Conditions (sometimes referred to as General Conditions) incorporated by reference in multilateral and certain bilateral official credit instruments. These are not stand-alone contracts, but standard terms that become part of contracts when referenced in the transaction documentation. General Terms and Conditions are creditor-specific; they do not change from one transaction to another. Creditors may revise them periodically, for incorporation in transactions going forward. Transaction-specific documents, including financial terms, supplement and may modify General Terms and Conditions.
Tradable Securities
We collect securities disclosure and offering documents that describe the underlying debt contracts, such as bonds and notes, typically found in regulatory filings or securities exchange submissions.
Document Types:
- Offering documents (registration statement, prospectus, prospectus supplement, offering circular, offering memorandum, information memorandum, or listing particulars): An information document, filed with securities authorities and used for marketing the securities.
- Indenture (US) or Trust Deed (UK): A contract between the sovereign issuer and a trustee, governing the terms of the trustee’s engagement as the representative of securities holders
- Fiscal Agency Agreement: A contract between the sovereign issuer and a fiscal agent, governing the terms of their relationship. Although the agent and the trustee may perform similar tasks (notices, payments), the agent represents the issuer, not the securities holders.
- Note, Bond: A tradable security representing the issuer’s promise to repay. A Global Note or Bond is a single instrument representing an entire series of securities.
Uses of Securities Documentation:
A securities offering typically implicates all three types of documents described here, and others that we do not collect. Any given offering may include different permutations of disclosure, creditor coordination, and debt instruments:
- A single disclosure document (eg, “shelf” prospectus) may describe more than one series securities with different terms, and may be combined with series-specific disclosure (eg, “prospectus supplement”)
- A single debt instrument may be associated with multiple disclosure documents, for example, if it represents a “reopening” of a previous issue
- Disclosure documents may be embedded within regulatory filings, and may contain forms of contracts and debt instruments (“form of indenture,” “form of note”)
How We Handle Different Configurations:
| Configuration | Our Approach | Example |
| Multiple instruments in one document | We treat each security as a separate contract and record all relevant terms for every series | Republic of Indonesia Bonds Due 2029 / 2031 / 2051 / 2071 with four different maturity dates and interest rates |
| Multiple documents for one instrument | We upload all documents but only tag the initial issuance. Reopened tranches are uploaded but not separately tagged | State of the Netherlands Bonds Due 2031 Re-Opening (initially issued in 2021) |
| “Form of” documents | We upload and tag these template documents even when unsigned and undated, because the eventual transaction documents must substantially conform to the forms. | Form of Indenture Government of Jamaica dated July 28, 2015 |
Document Sources and Reliability
We collect contracts from following sources, which we have ranked by reliability:
| Reliability | Source | Rationale | Example |
| ⭐⭐⭐ Highest | Government party (debtor or creditor) | Governments have the best information about their lending and borrowing. | Sierra Leone Parliament, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) |
| ⭐⭐ Moderate | Regulators and Securities Exchanges | National laws and regulations in major financial markets impose liability for material misstatements and omissions. | SEC EDGAR, Luxembourg Bourse |
| ⭐ Lower | Non-government media, academic, and other civil society sources | We have not independently verified the provenance of the document. | AidData, Financial Times |
Click the 
icon in PDF view to see each document’s original URL. Our ratings reflect our assessment of source reliability only. They do not reflect document quality, its contents, or good sovereign debt documentation practice. Please see important disclaimers here.
Status of the Contract Document
We endeavor to collect final, complete, and authoritative versions of the contracts we present on this platform: signed, dated, all pages present and legible, and including all documents referenced or incorporated by reference. However, we also include contracts that fall short of this ideal. We indicate the state and status of each contract as follows:
- Execution: Is the contract signed and dated?
- Completeness: Are all pages and sections present and legible?
- Incorporation: Does the document incorporate external contracts by reference, and are they linked in our platform?
These indicators only apply to contracts that are or were finalized, including contracts associated with matured obligations and debts repaid in full. They do not apply to offering documents, forms of documents, and general terms and conditions incorporated by reference.
What We Upload and Tag:
| Status | Action |
| ✓ Executed, Complete, Incorporated | Uploaded and tagged. Indicates that the contract was finalized and contains all relevant terms. |
| ✓ Executed, Complete, Unincorporated | Uploaded and tagged. Indicates that the contract was finalized, but references terms in other documents not available on our platform, and may not account for the credit relationship in its entirety. |
| ✓ Unexecuted, Complete | Uploaded and tagged. Although the document appears to be complete and final, we are are relying on the provenance of the document for its authoritative status. We only include documents we find on government and reputable media and scholarly websites. |
| ✓ Unexecuted, Incomplete | We make case-by-case decisions whether to include incomplete documents in the platform. Incomplete documents on government party or regulator websites are most likely to be authoritative and present the most compelling case for inclusion. The platform prototype does not include incomplete documents. |
Borrower and Creditor Details
The platform prototype includes search and filter functions by borrower and creditor characteristics, including national income, credit rating, climate vulnerability, and debt distress, among others. These characteristics are presented as of the date of the contract. As a result, a search by country name may yield documents with different credit ratings, debt distress and national income characteristics for the same borrower or lender, if these had changed during our coverage period.
We use the following sources for borrower and creditor characteristics:
- The World Bank for national income and lending eligibility groups
- Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard & Poor’s for issuer credit ratings, using long-term foreign-currency credit ratings where available
- The International Monetary Fund for the size of borrower economy
- The International Monetary Fund for borrower Debt-to-GDP ratio
- International organizations, the Paris Club, and borrowing government websites for restructuring experience (including Common Framework and private sector debt restructuring)
- The International Monetary Fund Article IV debt sustainability assessments for risk of debt distress for market access and low-income countries. Debt sustainability analysis in low-income countries is produced jointly with the World Bank.
- The OECD for official and private creditors. Note: Our search function allows users to combine multiple creditor characteristics. For instance, a state-owned bank would be classified as an Official Creditor, as well as a Bank.
- For regulated private creditors, such as commercial banks, we use the “Country” label under “Creditor Details” to indicate the country of their primary regulator. As a result, search results filtered by the creditor’s country on the prototype platform will include both government lenders and bank lenders regulated by the same governments. If the loan is made by banks from multiple jurisdictions, all relevant jurisdictions will be reflected under “Country” and will appear in the search results.
To understand more about our method, here is the search guide.