Personal remittances, paid (current US$) by country

What this measures

Personal remittances comprise personal transfers and compensation of employees. Personal transfers consist of all current transfers in cash or in kind made or received by resident households to or from nonresident households. Personal transfers thus include all current transfers between resident and nonresident individuals. Compensation of employees refers to the income of border, seasonal, and other short-term workers who are employed in an economy where they are not resident and of residents employed by nonresident entities. Data are the sum of two items defined in the sixth edition of the IMF's Balance of Payments Manual: personal transfers and compensation of employees. Data are in current U.S. dollars.

Limitations: Remittance transactions have grown in importance over the past decade. In a number of developing economies, receipts of remittances have become an important and stable source of funds that exceeds receipts from exports of goods and services or from financial inflows on foreign direct investment. But the quality of statistical remittance data is not high. Remittances are a challenge to measure because of their nature. They are heterogeneous with numerous small transactions conducted by individuals through a wide variety of channels: formal channels, such as electronic wire, or through informal channels, such as cash or goods carried across borders.

Each country's latest available year is shown; countries report on different schedules, so compare years before comparing values.

Ranking

Regions and income groups

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Source

World Bank, World Development Indicators, BM.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT, CC BY 4.0. Original source: IMF balance of payments data, International Monetary Fund (IMF); Staff estimates, World Bank (WB) View on data.worldbank.org; the full definition is in the World Bank's metadata glossary.