Migrant money transfers are “an essential rescue buoy” for poor countries

While the number of migrants has dropped around the world in 2021, fund transfers to their countries of origin should be a spectacular increase of 7.3% this year at $ 589 billion.

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While the number of migrants has dropped around the world in 2021, transfer of funds to their countries of origin should be a spectacular increase of 7.3% this year at $ 589 billion (520 billion. euros). Migrants from poor countries send three times more money than all public development assistance spent by rich countries around the world. The World Bank, which publishes these figures Wednesday, November 16, highlights their “importance” as a bulwark for the economic crisis that currently affects the low and middle-income countries.

The institution located in Washington even calls on governments to “facilitate these transfers” to support the global recovery and because they are “an essential rescue buoy for household spending in food, health and the education during periods of economic difficulty “. The increase is awarded to two main causes: first of all the vigorous economic recovery in the host countries, the United States and Europe, helped by important support plans; and the needs of families in poor countries, who have suffered the pandemic of Covid-19.

Money flows up 21.6% in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in countries that have welcomed migrants in transit to the United States, including Mexico, which suggests. Part of the sums used to pay smugglers. The other hypothesis is the massive arrival of American teleworkers in these countries during the confinement, which would have resulted in significant currency transfers.

“hindered process”

Increases are more specific to some regions, such as those from the Gulf and Russia countries, whose savings are taking advantage of rising oil prices, or to countries in crisis such as Lebanon or the Yemen. In the rest of the world, the increase is between 5% and 10%, except in East Asia (excluding China) where it should only progress by 1.4%.

Migrants are going to work abroad despite exorbitant costs. A Bangladeshi pays an average of the equivalent of twenty months of his salary to agents, Saudi Arabia, to find a job. It is also more difficult for them to find a job. The World Bank notes that “the decline in the number of foreign workers in the Gulf countries” is a “disturbing bottom trend from the point of view [of the country at low and medium income”.

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/Media reports.