India received $111 billion in remittances in 2022, the first to surpass the $100 billion mark

MUMBAI: India is the origin of the largest number of international migrants – almost 18 million, with large diasporas in the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Saudi Arabia. And it continues its march as the first recipient country remittances of its diaspora: the figure exceeded 110 billion dollars in 2022.
According to the World Migration Report 2024, released in Dhaka on Wednesday by the UN’s International Organization for Migration, India, Mexico and China were the top three countries receiving remittances in 2022, followed by the Philippines, France and Pakistan. India received $111 billion in total, the first country to reach and even surpass the $100 billion mark. In 2020, it had received $83 billion. Mexico, with incoming remittances worth $61 billion, was the second largest recipient; the previous year it had replaced China for second place and continued to maintain its dominance.
China’s incoming remittances in 2022 amounted to $51 billion. The contraction and its drop to third place has been attributed to multiple factors, including demographic changes that have resulted in a reduction in the working-age population and the country’s zero Covid policy, which prevented people from traveling abroad to work. During 2022, India’s other neighboring countries, Pakistan (rank 6) received an inflow of almost $30 billion and Bangladesh (rank 8) received $21 billion.

The report notes that international remittances have recovered from the 2020 drop due to the pandemic. Migrants are estimated to have sent $831 billion in international remittances globally in 2022, up from $791 billion in 2021 and significantly more than $717 billion in 2020.
Migratory corridors: In 1970, there were only 84 million international migrants, which translated into 2.3% of the world’s population. As of mid-2020 (based on the latest available data), almost 280 million people lived in a country other than their country of birth, making up 3.6% of the world’s population.
The size of a migration corridor from ‘country A’ to ‘country B’ is measured as the number of people born in ‘country A’ who were residing in ‘country B’ at the time of the estimation. The corridor from Mexico to the United States is the largest in the world with almost 11 million people. They are followed by corridors from the Syrian Arab Republic to Turkey and from Russia to Ukraine, largely attributed to the displacement of people due to civil unrest and invasions.
The India-UAE corridor is the fourth largest. An interactive map released by the IOM shows that there were 3.47 million Indians in the UAE, followed by 2.7 million in the United States (which was the sixth largest international migration corridor) and 2.5 million in Saudi Saudi (in ninth position).
The report does not separately reflect the main countries of origin of incoming remittances to India, but it is understandable that they come from the main diaspora-focused countries. The United States and Saudi Arabia took the top two spots on the list of countries sending remittances abroad, with outflows of $79 billion and $39 billion, respectively, in 2022.
Net migration is the difference between the influx of immigrants to a country and those who migrate from it abroad. For 10 countries, including India, the estimated net outflow of migrants exceeded one million during the period 2010 to 2021. India’s net migration flow was (–) 3.5 million during this period. Interestingly, India, which in mid-2020 had the largest diaspora of nearly 18 million (1.3% of the world’s population), was ranked 13th as a destination country, hosting 4.5 million migrants (0.3 % of world population).