Briefing: Remittance Trends 2007

Recorded remittances to developing countries are estimated to reach $240 billion in 2007. The true size of remittances including unrecorded flows is even larger. The brief describes broad regional and country specific trends in remittance flows worldwide, and highlights some structural changes that will affect future flows.

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Download Excel (25 KB). Figure 1: Remittances and Capital Flows to Developing Countries.

Remittances Data

On November 29, 2007, the remittances inflows and outflows data for 2006 was updated and revised for previous years based on the new IMF Balance of Payments Statistics, August 2007. Most of the updates are for developed countries. For India, we use the Reserve Bank of India’s statistics to calculate the remittance inflows for 2006. Remittance inflows received by different income groups were adjusted to reflect the World Bank’s new income classification (available here).

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Estimates of bilateral remittances flows are posted at South-South Migration and Remittances.

See annex 4 A.1 (p. 105, Chapter 4 of Global Economic Prospects 2006) for more details.