RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazil’s economy recorded 9. 7% this quarter compared to the era of the last three months amid the coronavirus pandemic, the National Institute of Statistics reported Tuesday.
This is the time of the consecutive quarter of falls in the country’s gross domestic product, which is widely perceived as a recession.
The fall between April and June was the biggest quarterly drop since 1996, however, some economists and the president of the Central Bank of Brazil speculated a few weeks ago that the drop could be greater, even as much as 11%.
“The good news is that while the drop is very significant, we can see the possibility of a recovery in the next quarter,” said Gilberto Braga, an economist and professor at Ibmec, a Brazilian university of personal studies.
Braga said trends imply that Brazil could grow around 0. 5% in the third quarter.
Brazil has shown more than 3. 9 million coronavirus infections, with 121,000 deaths. President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently argued that the economic effect on closures and other measures during the pandemic would be more damaging to Brazil than COVID-19 itself.
The financial sector surveyed through brazil’s Central Bank projected on Monday that the economy would contract by 5. 28% by the 2020 total, a more favorable outlook than a month earlier, when they forecast a 6. 5% decline.