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By KELIN DILLON

Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) only grew .2 percent during the second fiscal quarter of 2024, showing that Mexico’s economy is expanding at a lower-than-expected rate and consequently weakening the Mexican peso’s value to the U.S. dollar.

Economists had predicted that Mexico’s GDP would exceed the 2024 first quarter’s GDP growth of .3 and grow by .4 percent during the second quarter, but the nation’s economy ultimately missed the estimated mark by .2 percent.

The quarter’s economic growth was only buoyed to positive territory by the service and industrial sectors, each of which moderated their growth from the previous quarter while primary sectors such as agriculture, fishing and mining declined by a total of 1.7 percent.

Experts say the slow GDP growth is partially due to the high interest rate in Mexico, which currently stands at 11 percent.

“The data for the second quarter was less strong than expected, so the moderation underway will deepen in the rest of the year as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) six-year term comes to an end and the political transition to Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration begins, as has happened repeatedly in the last 30 years,” Moody’s Analytics Latin America Director Alfredo Coutiño told daily Mexican newspaper Reforma.

As a result of the news, the currency exchange rate adjusted to 18.82 Mexican pesos to 1 U.S. dollar on Tuesday, July 30, the lowest value the peso has registered since early June.

However, despite Mexico’s slowing GDP, the country has still experienced 11 consecutive quarters of economic growth.