Council: Families rely on payments, which hit $8.9 billion last year

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY – Money sent to Mexico by relatives in the United States is likely to increase by 10 percent to 20 percent this year, the government's Population
Council said Sunday.

The council said hundreds of thousands of families depend heavily on those funds, which it said reached $8.9 billion last year, or nearly $24.4 million a day. That was
an increase of 35.3 percent from 2000.

Other Mexican agencies have also released estimates of remittances. Calculations are difficult and vary because many transfers never pass through banks. It's also
hard to distinguish some transfers from tourism spending.

The council's news release did not give figures for the amount sent home so far this year, and there was no answer at its office Sunday.

About 1.2 million Mexican homes, or one in five, receive remittances from relatives in the United States, the council said.

Most of those families have "a high level of dependence on dollars from abroad," spending them on basic needs and saving little, it said.

"Almost 40 percent of the homes that receive monetary transfers from abroad are highly vulnerable to the possible interruption of the shipment since it is their only
source of income," the agency said.

The Population Council said Mexico's economic crisis of 1994-1995 sharply stimulated migration to the United States. Before the December 1994 plunge of the
Mexican peso, fewer than 700,000 families regularly depended on money from abroad.

It said remittances have been rising sharply since 1996, when they reached $4.2 billion. Mexico trails only India in the amount sent home by relatives abroad.

The government of President Vicente Fox has been pushing to channel more remittances into investments and to persuade banks and exchange houses to lower
transfer fees and make remittances easier.

The Population Council is a government agency that uses census and other data to study population and economic trends.