The Mexican economy received a record US$32,812.47 million dollars from its compatriots abroad during the first seven months of the year, an increase of 16.39% compared to the US$28,192.23 million for the same period in 2021, the Bank of Mexico reported this Thursday. (Banxico).
With this result, remittances from Mexican nationals to their country of origin total 27 months with sustained increases at the annual rate.
In addition, between January and July 2022, the average individual remittance was US$389, higher than the US$371 received by Mexican families during the same period in 2021.
The number of operations went from 75.96 million to 84.26 million in the same period of comparison, and most of them were electronic transfers.
In July alone, the amount of remittances was US$5,296.79 million, 16.5% more than the amount of US$4,545.05 million in the seventh month of 2021.
Almost US$153 million more were also received than last June, or a positive difference of about 3%.
The substantial increase in remittances continues the upward trend marked since May 2020, while in March of the same year, at the beginning of the pandemic, the figure of 4,000 million dollars received from abroad was exceeded for the first time.
The importance of remittances
Mexico added a total of US$51,585.7 million in remittances at the end of 2021, a record figure that represented an increase of 27% compared to 2020, when they reached US$40,605 million.
In the midst of the pandemic, the volume of remittances in 2020 represented an increase of 11.4% compared to the US$36,438 million in 2019.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has received on several occasions the 38 million Mexicans in the United States for the entry of millions of dollars into the Latin American country and has even described them as “heroes”.
In Mexico, about 4.9 million households and about 11.1 million adults receive remittances from their relatives abroad, according to a report by the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (Cemla).
This money, which comes mainly from Mexican migrants living in the United States, represents the second source of foreign exchange for Mexico, after automotive exports, and represents more income than the Mexican agricultural sector, which contributes 3% of the gross domestic product. (GDP) Mexican.
For this reason, the Government of Mexico trusts that remittances will help lift the country’s economy, which registered a contraction of 8.2% in 2020 and rebounded just 4.8% in 2021.
In 1995, the first year for which the Bank of Mexico offers results, remittances were US$3,672 million.