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25/11/2017 | Latin America - Mexican Economy Shrank in Third Quarter as Natural Disasters Hit

Anthony Harrup

Gross domestic product fell 0.3% seasonally adjusted from the second quarter.

 

The Mexican economy contracted in the third quarter from the preceding period as a series of natural disasters affected services and oil production.

Gross domestic product, a measure of output in goods and services, fell 0.3% seasonally adjusted from the second quarter, and was up 1.5% unadjusted from the third quarter of 2016, the National Statistics Institute said Friday.

The decline from the second quarter, which translates into an annualized drop of 1.2%, was the first since the fourth quarter of 2015 when GDP slipped 0.1%, according to revised data. Industrial production contracted 0.6% from the second quarter, services were 0.1% lower and agricultural production rose 0.5%.

Mexico suffered two major earthquakes in September that left at least 471 people dead and damaged thousands of homes, schools, and other buildings in Mexico City and nine states.

State oil company Petróleos Mexicanos shut in part of its oil production after a quake in southern Mexico led to the temporary closure of its biggest refinery, and refinery outages on the U.S. Gulf Coast following Hurricane Harvey caused crude shipments to be postponed, leaving Pemex’s storage at full capacity.

The Bank of Mexico said this week that it expects the economy to grow between 1.8% and 2.3% this year, down from its previous estimate of 2% to 2.5%, largely because of the effect the disasters had on output.

The third quarter results brought GDP growth for the first nine months of the year to 2.2%, down from 2.9% in all of 2016.

**Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@wsj.com

Wall Street Journal (Estados Unidos)

 



 
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