But they were under US $4 billion for the first time in 8 months
by the El Reportero‘s wire services
Remittance payments topped a landmark US $50 billion in 2021 and continued that strong performance in January.
The Bank of México reported that payments totaled US $3.93 billion in the first 31 days of 2022, a 19.6 percent increase on the figure for January 2021.
There were 10,589 remittances sent in January with an average value of $371. That was 10.4 percent more payments than in January last year and the average payment was 8.3 percent higher.
However, the total received for the first month of 2022 was still a fall on the previous month: 17.2 percent less than in December, when $4.75 billion was received. January also ended a run of eight consecutive months with payments over $4 billion.
It was a record breaking year in 2021 for remittances, which were $10 billion higher than in 2020.
The money is typically sent home by Mexican nationals living in the United States, but some experts speculate that an unknown percentage of remittances are part of money laundering schemes by criminals in Mexico.
President López Obrador has thanked the 38 million Mexicans in the United States for their contribution to the Mexican economy on various occasions. He has described those migrants as heroes and estimated that their payments benefit around 10 million families.
Remittances are Mexico’s second largest source of foreign currency after automotive exports.
Mexico News Daily
In other Mexico’s news:
19 million Mexicans on minimum wage in January, up 39 percent since December
Businesses have not fully recovered from pandemic, says expert
The number of Mexicans earning the minimum wage has increased 39 percent in the space of a single month to 19 million, official data shows.
Data from the national statistics agency INEGI shows that 5.3 million additional people were earning the minimum wage in January compared to December 2021.
The minimum wage increased 22 percent in January to 173 pesos (US $8.40) per day, or 5,186 pesos (just over US $250) per month, in most of the country. The minimum in the northern border region is 50 percent higher at 260 pesos per day.
Since records began, there has never been such a high number of minimum wage earners, and for the first time ever they are the largest cohort of workers.
INEGI data also shows that the number of people earning more than the minimum wage but no more than double that amount decreased by 11 percent, or 2.3 million workers, to just under 18 million between December and January.
Only 2.3 million people earn between three and five minimum wages, down from 3.5 million in December, while just 800,000 earn more than five times the minimum, or over 865 pesos per day or 25,950 (US $1,260) per month. A month earlier in December that figure was 1.3 million.
Héctor Magaña, head of the economy and business research center at the Tec de Monterrey university, told the newspaper El Universal that wages have generally decreased because businesses have not fully recovered from the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
“They tend to offer positions with lower remuneration than … in previous periods,” he said.
