|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Nigeria had the highest inflow remittances of N7.9trillion ($22.3 billion) in 2017 from its citizens in diaspora compared to other African countries. The highest the country has remitted in more than two decades, as compiled by the World Bank’s Global Migration and Remittances Data.
Last year’s remittance by Africa’s largest economy was up by 10.9 percent from $20.1 billion in 2016 to $22.3 billion in 2017. This excluded the
volume of remittance that goes through informal channels which were mostly unaccounted for.
Remittance to Nigeria came in as the fifth largest in the world and the largest when compared to its African peers, as Egypt remitted $18.1 billion,
Senegal trailed at $2.3billion followed by Ghana with $2.1 billion, East Africa’s largest economy, Kenya got $1.8billion and South Africa remitted
$765 million.
This is following a period when the naira was very weak against the dollar, Euro and other foreign currencies, which resulted from low oil prices, lack
of devaluation of the currency by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) lack of exchange rate policy and window.
This could have led to the increase in the remittance, as Nigerians living abroad, knowing that a dollar was equivalent to as high as N480 as at the time would be encouraged to send in more money to the country.
According to the World Bank’s remittances report, the funds remitted globally rebounded 3.8 percent or $22.14 billion in 2017 from $573.5billion in 2016 to $595.6 billion in the year under review.
Meanwhile, remittance inflows improved in all regions of the world and the top remittance recipients were India with $69 billion, followed by China
($64 billion), the Philippines ($33 billion) Mexico ($31 billion), and Nigeria occupied the last spot on the top five countries.
Remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) also accelerated 11.4 percent to $38 billion, supported by uptick in the global economy, especially in the
high-income Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries with the stability in commodity prices providing further
support.
However, the costs involved remained prohibitively high; in the first quarter of 2018, average global cost of sending $200 to SSA was 9.4 percent, far from the global average of 7.1 percent and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal target of 3.0percent, as compiled from United Capital research, Lagos-base financial and investment services provider.
The diaspora community could be a huge potential for domestic infrastructural development in Africa’s most populous nation, as this was
explored in mid-2017 through the issuance of the first ever Federal Government of Nigeria Diaspora bond which was oversubscribed by 130
percent.
A further breakdown of the report shows that remittances to low- and middle-income countries rebounded to a record level in 2017 after two
consecutive years of decline.
The bank estimated that officially recorded remittances to low- and middle- income countries reached $466 billion in 2017, an increase of 8.5 percent over $429 billion in 2016.
Endurance Okafor
