Mexico City – Mexico’s government may be overestimating the amount of money sent home by migrants each year, an official said Monday, casting a pall over recent reports of an enormous increase in remittance money.
Remittances usually refer to money sent home by migrants to help their families survive while their breadwinners are abroad. But what the government lists as “family remittances” may in fact be counting business payments between individuals as well.
When narrowly defined, remittances may amount to only about $9.65 billion annually, much less than the $16.6 billion the government reported for 2004, said Rodolfo Tuiran, an official of the Social Development Secretariat who helped carry out a study that yielded the lower figure.
His study relied on a variety of sources, including Mexican census and income data, and economic information from the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis.
“It’s surprising that two agencies have figures that diverge so widely; … it’s a notoriously big difference,” Tuiran said. “An unknown portion of these money transfers should not be considered as family remittances. These are another type of transfers which could include payments for goods and services.”
Mexico’s central bank had reported a 24 percent increase in remittances from 2003 to 2004, surpassing tourism revenues as the country’s second-largest source of foreign currency after oil sales.
The central bank, which counts most cash transfers between individuals as remittances, has said the big increases in recent years may be due in part to better reporting. Money previously sent home in cash is increasingly channeled through easier-to-track bank accounts or transfer services.
Remittances continued to grow at a 20 percent clip in the first quarter of 2005, the Bank of Mexico reported.
Jesus Cervantes, the Bank of Mexico’s director of economic measurements, said, “The bank has confidence in the data we are reporting.” He defended the bank’s higher figures, arguing the information it used was more complete than the U.S. data Tuiran drew on.
Of the nearly 11 million people born in Mexico living abroad, 98 percent of them reside in the United States.
