BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s economy contracted by 1.5% in the first quarter of the year, government statistics agency IBGE said on Friday, as the coronavirus outbreak in March triggered the steepest quarterly drop in almost five years.
The decline of Brazil’s gross domestic product (GDP) from the prior quarter was in line with the median forecast in a Reuters poll. The 0.3% contraction from a year earlier was slightly less than the 0.4% decline economists had expected.
(Reporting by Jamie McGeever; Editing by Brad Haynes)
