Honduras Statutory legal interest (interés legal)

What this value means

Fixed 6% per annum, unchanged since the Código Civil took effect on 1 March 1906 (art. 2369: 'Este Código empezará a regir el 1o. de marzo de 1906'). It is the damages measure for default on a money debt and applies only 'a falta de convenio' — an agreed rate displaces it. Art. 1368 adds that accrued interest itself bears the legal rate FROM THE DATE IT IS JUDICIALLY CLAIMED, even where the obligation said nothing about it, so a creditor gets no compounding until suit; the same article refers commercial dealings to the Código de Comercio and leaves montes de piedad and savings banks to their own regulations. Art. 1369: taking the capital without reserving interest extinguishes the interest claim, and taking the last instalment without reservation extinguishes the earlier ones. COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS ARE ON A DELEGATED RATE THAT HAS NO PUBLISHED FIXING. Código de Comercio (Decreto 73-50 de 17 de febrero de 1950) art. 707 makes a defaulting debtor pay the agreed rate and failing that the legal rate as damages, computes it on the value of the thing where the obligation is for a certain or determinable thing (market price at maturity, exchange quotation, or expert valuation), and then says only: 'El interés legal en materia mercantil lo fijará la Secretaría de Hacienda.' No fixing by the Secretaría de Hacienda (today the Secretaría de Finanzas) is retrievable from official sources, so in practice the civil 6% is what fills art. 707 — but a creditor relying on it in a mercantile claim should expect the point to be argued and should ask the Secretaría for the current fixing rather than assume one. Art. 708 lets a commercial creditor claim its real loss instead, on proof, unless damages or a moratory rate were fixed by agreement. Art. 710 permits merchants to agree that accrued interest bears interest — compounding between merchants is lawful by pact, unlike the civil rule. FINANCIAL SYSTEM: rates charged by supervised institutions are not on the legal rate at all — Ley del Banco Central de Honduras art. 48, as reformed by Decreto 228-96 de 17 de diciembre de 1996, provides that 'Las tasas de interés que apliquen en sus operaciones las instituciones del sistema financiero nacional serán determinadas tomando en cuenta las condiciones prevalecientes en el mercado, pero el Banco Central podrá regularlas cuando las circunstancias económicas así lo requieran' — free pricing with a reserve power in the BCH to regulate, exercised by general resolution. CURRENCY: art. 709 of the Código de Comercio makes money debts payable in lempiras at nominal value at the time of payment, and foreign-currency debts payable in their lempira equivalent unless a 'pago en efectivo' clause or equivalent was inserted.

Get it programmatically

curl https://latamref.dev/v1/hn/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://latamref.dev/v1/hn/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/hn/statutory-interest

Other Honduras series: Tasa de Política Monetaria (TPM) · Impuesto Sobre Ventas (ISV) · VAT registration threshold · Salario Mínimo · Días Feriados Nacionales · Inflación Interanual (IPC) · Impuesto Sobre la Renta - Personas Jurídicas · Withholding tax rates · Impuesto Sobre la Renta - Personas Naturales (Tabla Progresiva 2026) · Statutory social-insurance contributions

The same figure elsewhere: Jamaica · Mexico · Nicaragua · Panama · Paraguay · all 22