Indians abroad send more money home than others

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 08 December 2010, 12:50 IST
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Indians abroad send more money home than others
New Delhi: With an amount of $55 billion, India continued to be the largest recipient of remittances in 2010. The figure has risen from $49.6 billion in 2009. The country also stands at the second position among countries with largest number of emigrants after Mexico, according to the World Bank's Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011, reports Rema Nagarajan of the Economic Times. Even as 11.4 million people from India went abroad, 5.4 million came into the country that makes the country No. 10 in the list of nations attracting the most immigrants. As per the report, India and China, which received $51 billion in remittances, account for almost a quarter of the worldwide remittance flows of $440 billion in 2010. On the other hand, high-income OECD countries account for just $107 billion of the global remittance flow. It is the developing countries that received $325 billion, an increase of 6 percent from 2009. While middle-east countries like China, Russia, Mexico, India, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey received over $301 billion, low-income countries including Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Nepal, Uganda and Cambodia received only $24 billion. The total number of international migrants or people living outside their country of birth in 2010 to be 215 million persons, or 3 percent of the world's population, the report said. According to the World Migration Report 2010, brought out by the International Organization for Migration, about 57 percent of all migrants live in high income countries. With 42.8 million migrants in 2010 compared, the U.S. remains the top migrant destination country in the world. The country also recorded the largest outflow of remittances in 2009 - $48 billion - followed by Saudi Arabia with an outflow of $26 billion. Interestingly, with 6.1 million migrants, India is at the second place after the U.S. in the list of the most important destination for Asian migrants. However, this is primarily from Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.