Despite the pandemic which posed a serious threat to remittances to India from countries like the US, UAE and Saudi Arabia, the country received $87 billion in remittances in 2021, becoming the top remittance recipient, according to a World Health Organisation report.
The report said that in 2021 the top five remittance recipients in current US dollars were India, China, Mexico, the Philippines and Egypt.
The first WHO World report on the health of refugees and migrants said that today about one in eight people in the world, some one billion, are migrants.
India was the top remittance recipient, with $87 billion, among low- and middle-income countries, as per 2021 estimates, way ahead of China and Mexico’s 53 billion dollars, the Philippines (36 billion dollars) and Egypt (33 billion dollars).
The economic recovery in 2021 followed the resilience of remittance flows seen in 2020, which declined by a modest 1.7 per cent to $549 billion in the face of one of the deepest global recessions.