Mexico received $1.47 billion in remittances in January, down 2.3 percent from the same month in 2012, the country’s central bank said Friday.
The median amount per remittance in the first month of 2013 was $287.69, compared with $295.01 in January 2012, the Banco de Mexico said in its monthly report.
Most of January’s 5.1 million transactions took the form of wire transfers.
Remittances to Mexico totaled $22.45 billion last year, a decline of 1.57 percent from 2011.
Remittances from expatriates are Mexico’s second-largest source of foreign exchange after oil exports and help cover living expenses for millions of households.
Most of the money is sent from the United States, where an estimated 12 million Mexicans live, about half of them undocumented migrants.
