Remittances are funds sent by migrants to their home country.
After India, Mexico is the second-largest recipient country of remittances in the world. Most of that money is sent by Mexicans in the United States. About 40% of it is sent in cash.
Mexico’s central bank reported that in 2024, the country received $64.7 billion in remittances, a record amount. That sum accounted for nearly 4.7% of Mexico’s gross domestic product.
That explains in part why the Mexican government so fiercely defends keeping Mexicans in the United States.
But for Central American countries it’s a much higher percentage. Remittances account for a quarter of the GDP in both Honduras and Nicaragua. For El Salvador it’s 23.5% and for Guatemala 19.5%.
In May of 2025, as reported by Reuters, “Remittances sent to Mexico dropped 4.6% in May compared to a year earlier…The figure for May hit some $5.36 billion, the accumulation of some 13.9 million transactions averaging $385 each. While the size of each transaction edged up compared to the same month last year, the number of transactions dropped some 5.7%.”
More from Reuters: “In April, Mexico central bank logged the steepest drop in remittances in nearly 13 years. The May remittances data marked the second consecutive year-on-year decline and the third so far this year, according to central bank data. The decline in remittances sent to Mexico is an outlier in the region. El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have all registered sharp increases in remittances so far this year compared to the same period in 2024, according to official data.”