Weekly Report - 19 August 2003

Last year expatriates remitted home about US$32bn - and each dollar generates three more. 

If remittances home from Latin American and Caribbean expatriates continue to grow at the current average rate of 7% annually, by the end of this decade they will have contributed more than US$400bn to the regional economy. This eyecatching figure, tossed out last week by Trinidad-born Professor Anthony Bryan (who heads Miami University's Caribbean studies programme), on the basis of data compiled by the IDB's Multilateral Investment Fund, is based on a big `if' - and for a number of reasons doubts are being voiced nowadays about the sustainability of the growth rate. 

But even without that potential escalation, the impact the remittances are already having could not have been imagined a decade ago.
Last year remittances by expatriates climbed by 18% to a level in the same order of magnitude as all direct foreign investment in the region: US$32bn. (They had already overtaken aid disbursements some years ago.)