April 14, 2016
Akinpelu Dada
Nigerians in the Diaspora sent home $21bn in 2015, a slight improvement from the $20.83bn remitted a year earlier.
The figure was given by the World Bank in the latest edition of its ‘Migration and Development Brief’, which was released on Wednesday.
According to the bank, remittances to developing countries grew only marginally in 2015, as weak oil prices and other factors strained the earnings of international migrants and their ability to send money home to their families.
Officially recorded remittances to developing countries amounted to $431.6bn in 2015, an increase of 0.4 per cent over the $430bn in 2014.
The bank added that the growth pace in 2015 was the slowest since the global financial crisis, as the global remittances, which include those to high-income countries, contracted by 1.7 per cent to $581.6bn last year, from $592bn in 2014.
The bank stated, “The slowing in remittances growth, which began in 2012, was exacerbated last year by low oil prices, which are taking a toll on many oil-exporting remittance-source countries, such as Russia and the Gulf Cooperation Council states.
“As a result, many remittance-receiving countries, including India, the world’s largest remittance recipient, and Egypt saw remittances contract in 2015, as flows from the GCC countries slowed considerably. Remittances contracted by 20 per cent to countries in the Europe and Central Asia region, with the heaviest impacts on Tajikistan and Ukraine, as a struggling Russian economy, and depreciation of the Russian ruble against the dollar contributed to the decline in remittances to the region.”
According to the report, India retained its top spot in 2015, attracting about $69bn in remittances, down from $70bn in 2014. Other large recipients in 2015 were China, with $64bn; the Philippines, $28bn; Mexico, $25bn; and Nigeria, $21bn.
“Remittances are an important and fairly stable source of income for millions of families and of foreign exchange to many developing countries. However, if remittances continue to slow, and dramatically as in the case of Central Asian countries, poor families in many parts of the world would face serious challenges, including nutrition, access to health care and education,” the Director of the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, Augusto Lopez-Claros, said.
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