The government says Brazil’s economy has pulled out of the recession it slipped into after the second quarter of the year.

Brazil’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.1 percent in the third quarter from the previous quarter, ending the technical recession of the first half of the year, statistics agency IBGE said.

A technical recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of contracting GDP.

In the first quarter of 2014, the economy contracted 0.2 percent while in the second quarter it dropped 0.6 percent.

The IBGE said that industrial output in the third quarter expanded 1.7 percent, while the service sector grew 0.5 percent. Agricultural output contracted 1.9 percent and family consumption fell 1.3 percent.

President Dilma Rousseff named former treasury head Joaquim Levy as her next finance minister last week. Many observers expect Mr Levy to rein in spending in coming months.

Brazil’s economy is expected to expand by 0.20 percent in 2014, according to the Central Bank of Brazil’s latest weekly survey of private economists.