The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has named India as the first country in the world to have surpassed remittances worth more than USD 100 billion in it’s report released on 7th May. India appares as the top country in the list along with Mexico, China, the Philippines and France as other four in Top five. However, India remains well above the rest with receipt of over USD 111 billion in remittances in 2022 as per World Migration Report 2024.
India received remittances USD 53.48 billion in 2010, USD 68.91 billionin 2015, and USD 83.15 billion in 2020. It crossed the USD 100 billion mark in 2022. .The United Nations migration agency said that Mexico was the second-largest remittance recipient in 2022, a position it also held in 2021 after overtaking China. China historically had been the second-biggest recipient after India.
While India is first, Pakistan and Bangladesh are sixth and eighth in the list of countires. All three combined, forming subregion in Sother Asia, receives major inflows of remittances globally, signifying large scale migrant workers from the region. Pakistan and Bangladesh received nearly USD 30 billion and USD 21.5 billion respectively.
The Gulf countries are the most significant destinations for migrant workers from around the world. One would be astonished to notice that in migrants form up to 88 per cent, 73 and 77 per cent of the national populations respectively in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar.
Migrants mostly work in sectors such as construction, hospitality, security, domestic work and retail and come from coming from countires like India, Egypt, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya.
International Indian immigrants are about 18 million or 1.3 per cent of the total population with large diasporas living in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Saudi Arabia. As mentioned earlier, Mexico has replaced China as the second largest recipient of international remittances in the world after India. The remttance flows to China has slowed down due to shrinking of the working age population and the country’s zero-COVID policy.
However, in the area of Internation education, more than one million students were from China in 2021. India stood at second with 508,000, nearly half than China. The US is the largest destination country for international students in the world (more than 833,000), followed by the UK (nearly 601,000), Australia (around 378,000), Germany (over 376,000) and Canada (nearly 318,000).
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