Mexico City. Mexican citizens and businesses transferred $ 21 billion to 88 million in bank accounts in the United States in the first two years of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government, revealed information from the Federal Reserve (Fed), the US central bank.
Since the current government began in December 2018, Mexican bank accounts in US banks have become the largest in Latin American countries, according to Fed reports.
In November 2020, the accounts of Mexicans in that country amounted to 93 billion 618 million dollars, according to figures updated by the Fed at the end of last January. The amount exceeded by 29 percent to that reported in December 2018, which was 72 billion 530 million dollars. This meant an increase in the period of 21 billion 88 million.
For comparative purposes, the sum of the deposits of Mexicans in American banks is equivalent to 84 percent of the balance of the external debt of the federal government, which, according to the Secretary of the Treasury, reached 111 thousand 62,300 last December. 000 dollars.
The money route
The $ 21 billion 88 million in which Mexican deposits grew in the past two years equates to just over half of remittances to Mexico in 2020, which were $ 40.6 billion, and far exceed the value of oil and agricultural exports last year was $ 17,413 million and $ 18,682 million, respectively.
The sum reached last November by Mexican deposits in US banks is the second largest since record, according to Fed data. It is only surpassed by those reported in April 2020, when they were 96 billion 407 million dollars. So last year can be located the two months in which the two largest balances of money transferred from Mexico to that country have been reached.
In the first year of the current government, there was a small decrease in the resources of Mexicans. At the end of 2019, deposits totaled $ 71,878 million, less than $ 652 million from December 2018, according to Fed data.
Since then, the balance of Mexican accounts has generally remained on the rise, as official information shows.
In January 2020, the sum of deposits was 76 thousand 166 million dollars, an amount 4 billion 288 million higher than that considered just a month earlier, the Fed information showed. Up to 96 billion 407 million in April, the first month of confinement to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and when the Mexican private sector called for government support measures to alleviate the closure of the activity.
In May last year, deposits fell to $ 93.80 billion, an amount similar to that reported for the previous November, according to Fed data.
In Mexico, the benchmark interest rate fluctuated last year between 7 percent at the beginning of the period, and 4.25 percent in December. In the United States, it remained at 0.25 percent throughout the year.
The champions of the region
Among the citizens and companies of Latin America, those of Mexican origin are at the forefront in terms of the volume of their bank accounts in US territory.
Total Latin American deposits – excluding the Caribbean – amounted to $ 268,000 586 million last November, 16.6 percent more than in December 2019, when they were 230 billion 258 million, and 16.1 percent higher than the closing 2018, which were $ 231,000 to $ 251 million.
Thus, until last November, Mexicans owned just over a quarter, 26.8 percent, of total Latin American deposits, according to Fed data.
The second group of Latin Americans with the largest sum of deposits in American banks is that of citizens of Brazil -a larger economy than the Mexican-, with 32 billion 339 million dollars last November, an amount equivalent to just over of a third of what Mexicans have, showed Fed information.
The list is followed by the citizens of Chile, with 27 thousand 42 million dollars; Panama, with 23,821 million; Uruguay, with 20 billion 279 million, and Argentina, with 16 billion 943 million dollars, among the most relevant and, in all cases, with Fed figures updated last November.