Vietnam ranked ninth on the World Bank’s list of the 10 countries
that attracted the most overseas remittances, with 10 billion USD in
2012.
India topped the list with 69 billion USD, according to
the latest edition of the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief,
issued on April 19.
Other countries on the list were China (60 billion USD), the Philippines (24 billion USD) and Mexico (23 billion USD).
Smaller
developing countries, such as Tajikistan , Liberia , the Kyrgyz
Republic , Lesotho and Moldova , received the most as a share of
GDP.
According to the WB, officially recorded remittances to
developing countries grew by 5.3 percent to reach an estimated 401
billion USD in 2012.
Remittances to developing countries are
expected to grow by an annual average of 8.8 percent for the next three
years and are forecast to reach 515 billion USD in 2015.
Since 2000, the overseas remittance flow to developing countries has increased more than four times.
Global
remittances, including those to high-income countries, are estimated to
have reached 514 billion USD in 2012, compared to 132 billion USD in
2000, the WB said.
Given that many migrants send money and goods
through people or informal channels, the true amount of remittances is
much larger than these official figures.
The global average cost
for sending remittances was nine percent in the first quarter of 2013,
generally unchanged from 2012, the report added.-VNA