Which economies run on money sent home

The biggest receivers, 2024

8 of these 15 economies receive at least 5% of GDP in remittances and 7 receive less than that. One of them, Germany, pays out more than it takes in: $24.68B sent against $22.17B received. Across the 160 countries reporting both flows in 2024, 51 sent more than they received.

Source: World Bank WDI: personal remittances received (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), paid (BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), current US$ | World Bank WDI: GDP, current US$ (NY.GDP.MKTP.CD) Receipts and payments are gross, in current US dollars. All 160 countries reporting 2024 receipts also have a 2024 GDP figure, so the share column is complete. Methodology

The most dependent, 2024

One country appears in both the top-15 by level and the top-15 by share of GDP: Guatemala. Tajikistan tops this one at 47.2% of GDP, on receipts of $6.80B.

Source: World Bank WDI: personal remittances received (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), paid (BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), current US$ | World Bank WDI: GDP, current US$ (NY.GDP.MKTP.CD) Numerator and denominator are both current US dollars from the same WDI vintage. Where the dollar GDP denominator moves sharply, from a devaluation or a national-accounts revision, the share moves with it even if the dollar inflow does not. Methodology

Who pays, 2024

162 countries report remittance payments for 2024. The largest payer, United States, sends out $103.18B.

Source: World Bank WDI: personal remittances received (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), paid (BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), current US$ | World Bank WDI: GDP, current US$ (NY.GDP.MKTP.CD) Methodology

Take the remittances out of the current account

Remittances sit inside the current account: personal transfers under secondary income, compensation of employees under primary income. Subtracting net remittances from the recorded balance therefore removes those credits and debits and leaves the rest of the account as reported. It is an accounting subtraction, not a behavioural forecast: with no inflow the exchange rate, imports and output would all be different.

Of the 158 countries with both a 2024 IMF current-account balance and 2024 remittance flows, 17 recorded a surplus that becomes a deficit once net remittances are removed. A further 30 ran a deficit smaller than their net receipts, so removing remittances would more than double it.

Source: IMF Balance of Payments: current-account balance, US$ | World Bank WDI: personal remittances received (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), paid (BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), current US$ | World Bank WDI: GDP, current US$ (NY.GDP.MKTP.CD) Net remittances are receipts minus payments. The final column is the counterfactual balance over 2024 GDP. Methodology

How stable is the flow

The line below is a balanced panel: the 128 countries that reported receipts in every year from 2000 to 2024. Their combined receipts went from $116.58B to $809.97B, in current dollars. A balanced panel is necessary here: the raw table has 181 reporters in 2011 and 160 in 2024, so an unbalanced total would move with the membership as well as the money.

The worst year in the panel is 2009: the combined total fell 4.2% and 86 of the 128 countries recorded a decline. In 2020 the combined total rose 0.8%, and 73 of the 128 countries still recorded a decline. 124 of the 128 countries have a more volatile year-on-year growth rate than the aggregate does: the aggregate’s growth rate has a standard deviation of 6.80% over 2001 to 2024, against a median of 23.31% for the countries inside it.

Source: World Bank WDI: personal remittances received (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), paid (BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), current US$ Methodology

The 2021 corridors

Summed by receiver, the matrix can be checked against the balance-of-payments total for the same year. Of the 168 receivers present in both, 71 agree within 1%, 66 differ by more than 5%, and 33 differ by more than 20%. The largest gap in dollars is China: the matrix routes $53.00B of receipts into it against $17.12B in the reported series, a difference of $35.88B.

7 receivers in the matrix have no 2021 balance-of-payments observation to check against. The largest is Vietnam, for which the matrix models $18.06B of receipts; the reported series last carries an inflow for it in 2004.

Source: World Bank / KNOMAD Bilateral Remittance Matrix | World Bank WDI: personal remittances received (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), paid (BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), current US$ Matrix values are US$ millions in the source and are shown here converted to dollars. Corridor totals are compared against the 2021 reported receipts of the same country. Methodology

What this data cannot tell you

• Informal channels are not in the series. The WDI figures are compiled from balance-of-payments reporting. The parquet carries four columns (iso3, year, flow_type, value_usd) and no field that separates formal from informal transfer, so nothing in this module measures or bounds hawala, hundi, or cash carried home by hand. Whether a given country's reported figure embeds an estimate of those flows is not something this data can answer.
• The corridor matrix is modelled and single-year. It exists for 2021 only, so no corridor trend can be drawn from it, and it disagrees with the reported receipts by more than 5% for 66 of the 168 receivers that can be checked.
• The recent years are thin. 181 countries reported receipts for 2011; 160 report them for 2024.
• Estimated and reported values are not distinguishable. WDICSV.csv, the bulk file this module is built from, is a country-by-year value matrix whose only columns are country, indicator and year. It carries no per-observation flag, so nothing here can mark which figures are national submissions and which are World Bank staff estimates.
• No FDI or aid comparison. No claim comparing remittances with FDI or aid is made or refuted here. Such a comparison would pair this balance-of-payments flow with a series from a different collection on a different universe, and this module does not attempt it.

Country pages

185 of the 201 economies in the series have at least 10 years of receipt observations and get a page. 16 do not, and they are named below rather than silently dropped.

The 16 with no page

No receipt observation appears in any year for Bahrain, Brunei, 2 of the 16 listed here. United Arab Emirates, with 2 receipt observations, is the 2nd-largest payer in 2024 at $58.46B paid out.

Source: World Bank WDI: personal remittances received (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), paid (BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), current US$ Methodology