Mexican economy ended 2020 stronger than first estimated

MEXICO CITY: Mexico's economy grew quicker than first estimated during the fourth quarter as the country recovered from its sharpest economic contraction in nearly nine decades, official data showed on Thursday.

National statistics agency INEGI said the economy grew by 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with the previous three-month period, revising up its Jan. 29 preliminary estimate that gross domestic product (GDP) had expanded by 3.1%.

Battered by disruptions triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, GDP in Latin America's second-biggest economy plummeted by 8.5% across the whole of 2020 in seasonally-adjusted terms, INEGI said, confirming its preliminary estimate.

That is the biggest decline since 1932 during the Great Depression.

Compared with the same quarter a year earlier, the Mexican economy shrank 4.5% in the final three months of 2020 in adjusted terms.

Meanwhile, the economy grew 0.1% in December from November and contracted 2.7% from December of 2019, a separate INEGI report showed.