'Mexico to return to economic normality by June end'

Mexico City, March 6 (IANS) Mexico could return to "economic normality" by the end of June, with employment at the levels registered before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

Before the pandemic broke out in the country in February 2020, the number of workers registered with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) was over 20.5 million, a figure that could be recovered by the middle of this year, Xinhua news agency quoted the President as saying at a briefing on Friday.

According to Lopez Obrador, Mexico lost 1.1 million jobs due to Covid-19, after lockdown measures brought several economic sectors to a standstill, but in recent months some 600,000 jobs have been recovered.

"We believe that by the middle of the year we will have 20.5 million formal jobs again," the President told reporters at the National Palace here.

"I maintain that by June, by the end, we will already be in economic normality. We are going to have greater growth and recovery in industrial activity, especially in tourism, which was very hard hit," he said.

Economic recovery is expected to go hand in hand with a decline in Covid-19 rates and progress in vaccinating the population.

Lopez Obrador said he hopes to have everyone over 60 years of age, about 15 million people, vaccinated against the virus by April, as part of a gradual inoculation strategy that began at the end of December 2020.

With 188,866 fatalities, Mexico currently accounts for the world's third-highest Covid-19 death toll, after the US and Brazil.

So far, at least 2,112,508 people in the country have tested positive for the virus.

Mexico's economy, the second largest in Latin America after Brazil, contracted 8.2 per cent in 2020, its worst performance since the 1930s, as a result of the pandemic.

The economy is expected to grow 4.8 per cent in 2021, according to the Central Bank of Mexico.