Thread: Far fewer send cash home to Mexico

Far fewer send cash home to Mexico
By KEN ELLINGWOOD Los Angeles Times
Aug. 26, 2009, 6:50AM

MEXICO CITY — Cash remittances from Mexicans living abroad keep tumbling, with a second-quarter drop of 17.9 percent compared with the same period last year, officials said Tuesday.

Mexico’s central bank said remittances for April through June fell to $5.6 billion, continuing a trend that has lasted more than a year. The money transfers are off 12 percent during the first six months of 2009, compared with the first half of 2008.

The latest report was no surprise but spelled more gloomy news for Mexico’s economy, which has been hammered by declining oil earnings, a sharp drop in exports and a flu crisis last spring that put a big dent in tourism.

Remittances, or cash transferred by families from abroad, are one of Mexico’s three top sources of foreign income, along with oil and tourism, and help sustain millions of Mexican families.

Last year, when remittances totaled $25.1 billion, marked the first time that Mexico registered a drop in remittances for a full year since the central bank began keeping tally in 1996.

The central bank report attributed the drop mainly to the U.S. economic downturn, especially in the construction industry, which had been a reliable source of income for Mexican migrants working north of the border.

The U.S. recession has dried up many of those job opportunities and, with tighter U.S. border enforcement, discouraged many migrants from going back and forth in what had become a well-practiced tradition.

The remittance report is more sour news for Mexico. Last week, the central bank announced a second-quarter drop in gross domestic product of more than 10 percent. Analysts predict an annual drop in gross domestic product of 7 percent or more for 2009 — about the same decline as during the mid-1990s economic meltdown known as the Tequila Crisis.

Mexican officials say they believe the worst is over but are scrambling to make up the shortfall in revenues, including possible new taxes.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bus ... 87702.html

Tourism may also be down because of the drug violence they are not able to control. And who wants to travel to Mexico anyway, when everywhere one turns in this country, we are inundated with Mexican culture.
We have wonderful beaches in this country and there are the Caribbean islands for exotic places.