Latin America and the Caribbean

March 16, 2007 12:42 AM ET

US migrant workers send home $62.3bn

Migrant workers sent back more than $62.3bn to their families in Latin America and the Caribbean last year, a rise of 14 per cent on 2005.

The figures, to be released this weekend at the annual conference of the Inter-American Development Bank, confirm that remittances have become one of the region's most important sources of foreign exchange. For the fourth successive year they will exceed the combined flows of foreign direct investment and overseas aid into the region.

Mexico (with a total of $23bn), Brazil ($7bn) and Colombia ($4bn) receive most remittances, but the flows are especially beneficial for the poorer and more marginal countries of Central America and the Caribbean, where they account for more than 10 per cent of GDP in many cases.

Don Terry, head of the Multilateral Investment Fund, the IDB agency that monitors the flows, argues that as 8m-10m families "would be below the poverty line" without the remittances.

However, a clampdown by US migration officials on illegal immigrants could be contributing to a sharp slowdown in growth, Mr Terry claimed. [Read more]

Copyright 2007 Financial Times

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L America migrant money tops aid

By Duncan Kennedy BBC News, Mexico City

Remittances could reach $100bn in four years' time

The amount of money sent home by Latin American migrant workers to their families has reached more than $62bn.

This figure now exceeds the combined total of all direct foreign investment and foreign aid to Latin America.

According to the Inter-American Investment Bank, the figure could reach $100bn in four years' time. The biggest share of money, $23bn, was sent back to Mexico, mostly from workers living in the United States remitting small sums each month. [Read more]


March 18, 2007

Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean to top $100 billion a year by 2010, IDB fund says

Economic and demographic factors will keep pushing growth of money transfers sent by migrant workers to their homelands

GUATEMALA CITY – Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean will continue to grow in coming years and surpass $100 billion a year by 2010, according to the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF).

MIF Manager Donald F. Terry today presented the estimate for the money transfers made by Latin American and Caribbean migrants at a news conference held here on the eve of the annual meeting of the IDB Board of Governors, which will convene here Monday and Tuesday.

“Given present economic and demographic trends in Latin America and the Caribbean and in industrialized countries, remittances will continue to grow in volume over the next few years to more than $100 billion a year by 2010,” he said. [Read more]