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RIO DE JANEIRO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's GDP fell by 3.6 percent in 2016, marking the second consecutive slump for Latin America's largest economy, the government announced Tuesday.
According to the data from the state-owned Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), this result confirms the worst recession in Brazil's history. In 2015, the country's GDP fell by 3.8 percent, making it the first time Brazil has seen two years of negative growth since 1931.
In the fourth quarter of 2016, the economy shrank by 0.9 percent from the third quarter and 2.5 percent year-on-year.
All of Brazil's economic sectors saw strong losses over the course of 2016. Agriculture was the worst-hit, with a contraction of 6.6 percent. The industrial sector shrank by 3.8 percent while services fell by 2.7 percent.
Family consumption, which has been the engine of the Brazilian economy for the last decade, fell by 4.2 percent.
It was a worse performance than that in 2015 when it fell by 3.9 percent due to a drop in salary levels, restrictions on credit and a rise in the basic interest rate.
Government expenditure was slightly lower than that in 2015, down 0.6 percent.
Due to the valuation of the U.S. dollar against the real, exports of goods and services grew by 1.9 percent, although imports of the same categories dropped 10.3 percent.
In order to kickstart economic growth, President Michel Temer's government has launched sweeping fiscal reform to seek to improve public accounts, halt the recession and turn the deficit around.
A poll by Brazil's Central Bank found that the country's financial sector expects GDP to grow by 0.49 percent in 2017, while the government is projecting 1 percent growth.
