Mexicans received 29,964.22 million dollars in remittances between January and September of this year, an increase of 10% compared to the same period in 2019, despite the covid-19 crisis, the Bank of Mexico reported on Tuesday (Banxico).

Total remittances exceeded 27,239.66 million dollars in the first nine months of last year, the Mexican central bank specified in its monthly report.

The amount of money sent per transaction also increased, since the average remittance from January to September was 339 dollars, 3.95% more than in the same period of 2019, when it was 326 dollars.

Likewise, the number of operations went from 83.49 million in the first nine months of 2019 to 88.35 million in that 2020 stage, an increase of 5.82%.

In September alone, remittances accounted for 3.568.5 million dollars of income for Mexico, a figure practically identical to that of August.

These data contrast with March, when Mexico received a historical amount of more than 4,000 million dollars, a figure almost 49% higher than the 2,694 million dollars in February.

Remittances, almost entirely from the United States, break records despite the Covid-19 crisis, which in Mexico accumulates 92,100 deaths and 933,155 confirmed cases.

The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has thanked the 38 million Mexicans who are estimated to live in the United States on several occasions, estimating that this year they will send 40,000 million dollars in remittances to about 10 million poor families.

This Tuesday, during his morning conference and before the publication of the data by the Bank of Mexico, López Obrador already stressed that remittances are still “up.”

According to the president’s forecasts, this year the remittances sent to Mexico in 2019 would be exceeded, when they reached a historical maximum of 36,048 million dollars, with an increase of 7.04% compared to the figure registered in 2018.

This money, which comes mainly from Mexican immigrants living in the United States, represents Mexico’s second source of foreign exchange, after automotive exports.

Therefore, the Government of Mexico trusts that remittances will lift the country’s economy, which could contract by around 8% this year, according to the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP).

In 1995, the first year for which the Bank of Mexico offers results, remittances were 3,672 billion dollars (adjusted to the current exchange rate).