Brazil’s gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen for the third straight quarter, contracting by a record 4.5 percent year-on-year said the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) on Tuesday.

The decline in the three months to September 30 was “the biggest since the start of the historical data series in 1996”, IBGE said. The Financial Times newspaper noted in a report that “Latin America’s largest country is on track for its worst recession since the 1930s.”

Investment in Brazil shrank 15 percent from a year earlier in the third quarter, declining for the ninth consecutive quarter, official figures show. Output from the services sector and from the industrial sector fell for the fourth and sixth straight quarters respectively, the longest slumps on record, news agency Reuters reported.

Brazil’s Ministry of Finance said in a statement that the third-quarter data “point to a more extended adjustment of the Brazilian economy, due largely to factors beyond the impact of fiscal rebalancing… stemming from persistent uncertainty”.

Judged quarter-on-quarter, Brazil’s GDP contracted 1.7 percent in the July to September period, IBGE added.