Migrants send home three times more money than countries receive in development aid, says World Bank.
More than 200 million people live outside the country of their birth, and according to recent research from the World Bank, the money that these migrants send home is a significant yet often over-looked source of development funding.
The Bank’s new “Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011”, launched Monday, puts the overall value of remittances at some 325 billion US dollar in 2010. This is three times the amount of development aid and constitute more than 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in many developing countries.
– Remittances (penge fra arbejdere i udlandet, red) in 2008 and 2009 became even more of a lifeline to poor countries, given the massive decline in private capital flows sparked by the crisis, says Dilip Ratha, manager of the World Bank’s migration and remittance unit.
Jamaica in the Caribbian currently ranks fifth highest for remittances in Latin America and Caribbean, fuelled by the second highest brain drain in the world, according to the Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011.
Overall the factbook found that there are more than 215 million international migrants in the world.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
