Mexico‘s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday he expects that by the third quarter the Mexican economy will reach pre-pandemic levels, after gross domestic product contracted by some 8.5% last year due to the fallout of the coronavirus.

“Without a doubt, by the third quarter of this year we will already be (at the levels) we were before the pandemic,” Lopez Obrador told a news conference.

Mexico‘s economy grew 24.8% in May compared with the same month last year, as a recovery from a slump induced by the coronavirus pandemic gathered pace, a preliminary estimate published by national statistics agency INEGI showed on Thursday.

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If the preliminary estimate is confirmed, May’s activity was only about 0.4% behind the level reached in February 2020, the last full month before pandemic-related restrictions began to hit the economy, according to an index compiled by INEGI.

Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos forecast Mexico‘s GDP would firm to 6.0% in 2021, “with risk skewed towards a higher print.”

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Ramos based his forecast on the strong performance of the economy in fourth quarter, additional expansion in the first quarter and expectations for a “gradual but steady progress on the COVID vaccination front and strong external demand for the remainder of 2021.”