Friday, 4 September 2009

Kenyans’ remittances home rise 8%

Friday, 4th September, 2009
E-mail article Print article
NAIROBI

The amount of money sent home by Kenyans living abroad in July was $50.372m, up 8.7% from $44.137m in the same month of 2008, the Central Bank of Kenya said on Thursday.

Total remittances in the first seven months of 2009 stood at $342.3m, down 8.4% from the same period of 2008, but up 10.3% from January-July 2007.

“The surge in 2008 remittance inflows was attributed to the Safaricom IPO and post-election violence, which attracted large funds for investment and consumption smoothing respectively,” the bank said in a statement issued early on Thursday.

Remittances to east Africa’s biggest economy are a key source of foreign exchange. They totalled $611.2m in 2008, up from $573.6m in 2007. Read more

No comments:

Post a Comment