27, June, 2020
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on lives and economies lead to warnings of a recession in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In April the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, predicted a 5.2 percent recession this year for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Now it has revised and amended this to 9.4 percent. In Mexico's case the prediction is 10.5 percent.
Mexico currently reports more than 191,000 people infected with Covid 19 and more than 23,000 deaths. With the knock on from this, it is also economically reeling, having lost a million jobs. The World Bank forecasts Mexico's gross domestic product will slump seven and a half percent this year. This could be revised even further downward, because the country's economy is hard to accurately gauge. A large proportion of it is based upon tourism, service industries and remittances, which is money sent home to families, from migrant workers, mostly based in the United States.
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The United States has been enticing Mexico to re-open its manufacturing industries, especially mining and the automotive sectors. Yet the rate of infection and deaths are not as yet decreasing. Mexico is not out of the woods yet.