Moldova is a world leader by share of remittances in GDP

Moldova and Tajikistan continue to be world leaders by the share of remittances in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a World Bank study of the remittances sent by migrants says. Remittances sent to Moldova make up over one third of the GDP, Info-Prim Neo reports. Romania takes the tenth position in the world by the volume of remittances. According to the WB study, the Romanians working abroad sent home 6.8 billion USD in 2007. India ranked first in 2007 by the volume of remittances sent by migrants - 27 billion USD. It is followed by China with 25.7 billion USD and Mexico with 25 billion USD. Remittances in these three countries make up one third of the total world remittances. The next positions are taken by the Philippines, France, Spain, Belgium, Germany and the UK, the last two with 7 billion USD each. Such large European states like France, Spain, Germany and the UK, where the salaries are relatively high, are present in the list because they have many citizens working in other European states, where they earn more, the study says. As regards the ratio between the money sent from abroad and the Gross Domestic Product, the remittances in the first ten countries in the list represented only about 0.5% of their GDP in 2007. The World Bank says that the remittances in the developing countries in 2007 could total 240 billion USD. The remittances sent to Moldova in the first ten months of this year are larger than last year. The individuals in January-October 2007 sent home 972.21 million USD through commercial banks. This sum is larger than the remittances for 2006, when they totalled 854.6 million USD.