Indian diaspora produced over $100 billion remittance in 2022: UN

Around 18 million people migrate internationally, with sizable diasporas residing in the US, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates from India.

It kept moving forward as the biggest recipient of remittances, but 2022 was especially noteworthy as the amount surpassed $100.

“In 2022, India, Mexico, and China were the top three remittance recipient countries, followed by the Philippines, France and Pakistan,” the World Migration Report, 2024 which was released in Dhaka today by UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), read.

In 2022, India received $111 billion, the first country to reach and even surpass the $100 bn mark.

It had been granted $83 billion in 2020.

With $61 billion in remittances coming in, Mexico ranked as the second-biggest recipient in 2022. The year before, it had displaced China as the top recipient and was still in that position.
$51 billion in remittances from China were sent home in 2022.

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A number of reasons have been cited for the decline in remittance flows to China and its fall to third place, including changes in the country’s demographics that have reduced the number of people in working age and the zero-COVID policy that forbade citizens from traveling overseas in search of employment.

Pakistan, which ranks sixth among India’s neighbors, received around $30 billion in foreign direct investment in 2022, while Bangladesh, which ranks eighth, received $21 billion.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused a decline in overseas remittances, although the study notes that they have now rebounded. An estimated $831 billion in international remittances were sent by migrants worldwide in 2022—a substantial rise over the $791 billion sent in 2021 and much more than the $717 billion sent in 2020.

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Merely 84 million people worldwide were migrants in 1970, accounting for 2.3% of the global population. 3.6% of the world’s population, or around 280 million people, does not reside in their country of birth as of mid-2020 (the most recent data available).

India-United Arab Emirates is the fourth-biggest corridor. According to an interactive map made available by IOM, there were 3.47 million Indians living in the United Arab Emirates, 2.7 million in the United States (the sixth-largest international migration corridor), and 2.5 million in Saudi Arabia (ranked ninth).

Though it makes sense that the top diaspora countries would be the source of the majority of remittances to India, the study does not specifically list them. By the way, the top two nations on the list of those sending remittances abroad were the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 2022, the United States and Saudi Arabia transferred $79 billion and $39 billion, respectively, to foreign nations.

Between 2010 and 2021, the predicted net outflow of migrants for ten nations was more than one million. Temporary labor movements were the cause of outflows in many of these countries, including Bangladesh (−2.9 million), Nepal (−1.6 million), Sri Lanka (−1.0 million), Pakistan (net flow of −16.5 million), India (−3.5 million), and Bangladesh (−2.9 million).

Remarkably, India, the nation with the greatest diaspora—nearly 18 million people, or 1.3% of the world’s population—ranked thirteenth among destination nations, housing 4.48 million migrants, or 0.3% of the world’s population.