Emigrants close money sources
10/09/2013 00:00
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The money sent by emigrants have dropped this first semester by marking a
historic drop, since when the economy started facing the global crisis.
Recent official data of Bank of Albania show that for the first half of the year, the Albanian emigrants sent more than 111 million EUR less than the same period of one year ago. The drop was 32.6%.
The money transferred by emigrants have continued dropping since 2007, when they reached the peak with 900 million EUR. But the drop has never been as steep, showing that the emigrants are facing even more difficult conditions abroad.
Since the fall of the communist regime, remittances have been one of the main sources of revenues for the families, and also the currency flux in the economy. In 2007, according to the World Bank, they were 14% of the Gross Domestic Product, financing this way the consumption of families and the aggregate demand.
Their weight has fallen to 7% of the Gross Domestic Product. The dropping of the money that Albanian families receive from their emigrated relatives has been considered one of the erasons that consumption is also falling in Albania, by lowering the economic growth to lower levels than in 1997. But not only this. For many families, those are a vital source of revenues. An observation realized by the Albanian Bank in 2009, there are 160.000 families that receive regular sums of money from abroad, and 26% of them would be on the limits of poverty without them.
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