Mexico City, Jan 5 - Mexican emigrants sent home just less than $1.5 billion in November, down 14.43 percent from the same month in 2008 and the lowest monthly total since March 2005, the Mexican central bank said.

Of that total, $1.45 billion was sent via electronic transfers, $25.61 million in money orders and $20.82 million in cash, the Banco de Mexico said Monday.

The size of the average remittance in November, $297.28, reflected a 10.65 percent decline from November 2008.

Remittances to Mexico have undergone 13 consecutive months of declines and shown a pullback of 15.81 percent in the first 11 months of 2009.

Economists at BBVA Bancomer said that in the second quarter of 2010 they expect to "observe more consistent signs of improvement in remittances" in Mexico, coming in concert with an anticipated economic recovery in the US.

By far, most of the remittances Mexico receives come from the US, home to 12 million Mexicans - about half of them undocumented immigrants - and millions more descendants of Mexican immigrants.

Although remittances have fallen in dollars, the depreciation of the Mexican peso vis-a-vis the dollar was able to almost completely make up for that decline in income among families who are receiving them from loved ones abroad.

Thus, the cumulative annual variation in the remittances has been practically zero this year once they are converted into pesos.

"November shows that the declines are beginning to moderate themselves, although they are continuing at substantially lower levels to those seen in previous years (when the remittances were characterised by a continuing dynamism)," said the Ixe bank in an analysis released Monday.

Yet, the report by Ixe bank analysts Luis Flores and Lucia Martin says that "Mexicans (abroad) continue to be hit by the lack of employment, and they have not been able to reactivate the sending of remittances to their relatives".

"The resumption of the hiring of workers in the US and the consequent creation of jobs for Hispanic workers will be the only catalyst that will be able to reactivate the sending of resources in 2010," they maintained.

Ixe estimates that remittances in Mexico contracted by some 14 percent in 2009 to $21.27 billion, their lowest level since 2005.

Money from relatives abroad represents close to 19 percent of total income for urban Mexican households and 27 percent for rural households, according to official figures. (IANS)