Remittances

Remittances in recent years have exceeded official development aid by factor of more than two to one. This has brought to the fore the importance of transfers by immigrants to their families in origin countries for improving their welfare and living conditions. As a consequence, more and more attention is being paid to remittances as a possible boost to development in origin countries.

Definition

The data presented use a broad definition of remittances that is believed to better capture the extent of remittances than what appears under the heading of workers’ remittances. They include i) workers’ remittances recorded under the heading "current transfers” in the current account of the balance of payments; ii) compensation of employees, which includes wages, salaries and other benefits of non-resident workers, such as border or seasonal workers; iii) migrants’ transfers, which are recorded under capital transfers in the capital account and can include, for example, assets brought back to the country of origin.

The figures for remittances comprise transfers of money not only from immigrants in OECD countries, but from all foreign countries.

Comparability

The data shown here are compiled from receiving countries and generally only include officially recorded remittances. These may exclude amounts transferred that are less than a particular threshold value. Remittances transferred by informal methods or brought back by migrants in their pockets and not reported are not counted, nor are in-kind transfers of jewelry, consumer goods, etc. Informal transfers are believed to be significant and can amount to as much as fifty percent of total remittances in some countries. The differences between countries in the coverage of incoming remittances are unknown.

The table covers the top 30 countries of origin based on remittances-as-a-percentage-of-GDP, among those with over 250 000 immigrants residing in OECD countries.