MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s economy grew 12.0% during the third quarter, largely as expected, making up for much of the record contraction over the previous three months at the height of the coronavirus lockdown, preliminary data showed on Friday.
The seasonally-adjusted jump in gross domestic product (GDP) published by national statistics agency INEGI was fractionally better than the 11.9% expansion predicted by a Reuters poll.
The quarter-on-quarter increase was easily the biggest since current records began at the start of the 1980s, and benefited from massive stimulus spending in the United States.
U.S. demand helped Mexico rack up large trade surpluses during the past four months, as exports picked up speed, especially in the automotive industry. By contrast, domestic demand has lagged, with many businesses still struggling.
Alfredo Coutino, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, said Mexico was still heavily reliant on the U.S. economy, and forecast the recovery would slow in the months ahead.
“The Mexican economy is benefiting from the upturn in the U.S. business cycle, mainly through the U.S. demand for Mexican exports and remittances sent by Mexican migrants working in the U.S.,” Coutino said in a research note.
Between April and June, at the peak of Mexico’s pandemic lockdown, the economy shrank 17.1% from the first quarter.
Mexico has not recovered as quickly as the U.S. economy, which shrank by an annualized rate of 31.4% in the second quarter then jumped by 33.1% in the July-September period.
COMEBACK
Despite the economic chaos of the pandemic, remittances to Mexico have surged this year, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has forecast they will reach a record $40 billion.
During a regular news conference, Lopez Obrador hailed the GDP figures as evidence the economy was bouncing back.
A breakdown of the data showed primary activities like farming, forestry and fishing advanced by 7.4% compared with the previous quarter. Secondary activities such as manufacturing increased by 22.0%, INEGI said. Meanwhile tertiary activities, which encompass consumer spending and services, climbed 8.6%.
Lopez Obrador was eager to point out that the primary sector, which he has pushed with schemes to boost farming and tree planting, is doing better now than it was a year ago.
Mexico’s economy is forecast to shrink almost 10% in 2020, its deepest annual contraction since the Great Depression.
However, primary activities, which make up only a small part of the economy, were up 2.7% in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2019, INEGI said.
The severest months for the Mexican economy were April and May, when much of business activity ground to a halt, leading to the loss of roughly one million formal jobs. By Oct. 28, more than 400,000 jobs had been recovered, Lopez Obrador said.
Compared with the same period last year, Latin America’s no. 2 economy shrank by 8.6% in unadjusted terms in the third quarter, just less than the Reuters forecast of 8.7%.
Final third quarter data is due to be published on Nov. 26.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Chizu Nomiyama and Marguerita Choy)
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
