The International Migrants Day (December 18) comes close to the end of the year – perhaps a good time to pause and look back at how remittances sent by an estimated 214 million international migrants worldwide have become even more important for development during the last year. It is impossible to do justice to the range of issues, international attention and work across the globe on this topic during the course of 2009. We highlight a few that we have been following in our blog, briefs and other work:
- The current global economic crisis has made migration and remittances a huge issue now for many developing countries. We have been monitoring the crisis since last November when we made a fairly bold call that remittances might decline modestly but would be resilient compared to other capital flows (see story). Indeed, the data for 2009 show that remittance flows to developing countries have been remarkably resilient, while debt flows collapsed into negative territory and FDI declined by a third.* The recent debt crisis in Dubai has created additional risks, but migrants seem willing to wait it out as prospects at home are often even worse. Nonetheless, the prospect of a sharp reduction in foreign exchange flows after several years of rapid growth—and the possibility that some these workers might return—has brought remittances into the radar-screen of policy makers at the highest levels in virtually every developing country, ranging from Ethiopia to India to the Pacific Islands.