Mexican Remittances Hit Record $63 Billion in 2023

Mexico City, Feb 2 (AP) The money that Mexican migrants send home to their relatives grew by 7.6 per cent in 2023, to reach a record USD 63.3 billion for the year, Mexico's central bank said on Thursday.

The money transfers, known as remittances, have been booming since the coronavirus pandemic, but the rate of growth continued to cool somewhat in 2023.

In 2022, remittances grew by 13.4 per cent, totalling about USD 58.9 billion for the year as a whole. In 2021, remittances grew by an astounding 27.1 per cent, totalling about USD 51.6 billion for that year.

Observers have said the slower growth may be due to a combination of factors like slower economic growth in the United States — where most Mexican migrants work — higher inflation and a stronger Mexican peso.

Remittances now surpass almost all other sources of the country's foreign income, including tourism, oil exports and most manufacturing exports.

Mexico receives more money from remittances than any other country except India. Indian migrants send home about USD 125 billion each year. China's share of remittances was affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The average amount of each transfer remained steady at USD 393, just a slight increase from the average USD 391 in 2022, but the total number of transfers rose 6.6 per cent to over 1,61,000, according to the Bank of Mexico.

Remittances started their dramatic rise in May 2020, around the time the pandemic began hitting Mexico.

Remittances as a percentage of Mexico's GDP almost doubled over the past decade, growing from 2 per cent of GDP in 2010 to 3.8 per cent in 2020; since then that may have grown to around 4.5 per cent. Between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of households in Mexico receiving remittances rose from 3.6 per cent to 5.1 per cent. (AP) GSP