MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s economy performed better than initially estimated during the first quarter, as growth in activities like farming and forestry partly offset declines in manufacturing and services, official data showed on Tuesday.
Figures from national statistics agency INEGI showed that Latin America’s second-biggest economy shrank by 1.2% during the January-March period in seasonally adjusted terms.
That was significantly better than a decrease in activity of 1.6% estimated by INEGI on April 30.
Nevertheless, Mexico did not apply lockdown measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus until late March, so the impact of the pandemic is likely to weigh heavily on the second quarter.
The lockdown brought key sectors of Mexican industry to an almost complete standstill, and analysts estimate the economy will contract by up to 10% or more during 2020.
A breakdown of INEGI’s first quarter data showed that primary activities such as farming, forestry, fishing and mining grew by 1.7% from the previous quarter.
Secondary activities, which include manufacturing, contracted by 1.2%, while tertiary activities, which encompass the service sector, declined 0.9%, the figures showed.
In unadjusted terms, the economy shrank 1.4% compared to the same period a year earlier. That figure was 0.2 percentage points better than the initial estimate.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
