VHeadline commentarist, Guyana's Ambassador to Venezuela, Dr. Odeen Ishmael writes: Migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) living in the more developed countries will send back to their home countries US$64 billion in 2009, $4 billion less than in 2008. Nevertheless, this total represents more than the sum of foreign direct investment and official development aid combined.

As the global economic crisis continues, the flow of remittances is expected to be reduced by about 7%, according to reports emanating from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and other international financial bodies.

Already, this reduction is vividly noticed in recipient countries. Earlier this month, the Planning Institute of Jamaica noted that inflows to that country for the first quarter of this year dropped by 15% to $414.6 million compared to the same period last year.

The IDB has also reported that remittances to LAC in the fourth quarter of last year declined to $17 billion, 2% less than in the same period in 2007. The Bank also declared that this trend would continue throughout 2009. The scale of the decline will depend immensely on the length and severity of the economic crisis in major remittance “source countries”, particularly the United States, Spain Germany, Italy and Japan.

Two years ago, the IDB had optimistically predicted that, given the then existing economic and demographic trends in LAC and in the industrialized countries, remittances to LAC would continue to grow and surpass $100 billion a year by 2010. Definitely, this amount will not be achieved as a result of the sharp economic downslides in the industrialised countries during the past year, and the IDB and other international financial bodies are now busily revising their figures downward.

A reduction in remittances became noticeable early in 2008, and by the end of the year the $69.6 billion migrants sent home to the region barely increased by less than one percent over 2007. This slowdown is obviously the result of the economic recession which has brought about job losses in construction, manufacturing and tourism, the sectors attracting the greater proportion of the immigrant labour force.

A study on migration and remittances released this month by the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA) reveals that on an average, 65% of migrants remit to their families, amounting to over 20 million people. IDB statistics show that for 2008, of the $69.6 billion sent home to the region, the largest beneficiary was Mexico with $25.1 billion. Other large recipients were Brazil ($7.2 billion), Colombia ($4.8 billion), Dominican Republic ($3.1 billion), El Salvador ($3.8 billion),  Guatemala ($4.3 billion),  Peru ($2.9 billion), Jamaica ($2 billion), Honduras ($2.7 billion), Haiti ($1.8 billion), Nicaragua ($1 billion).

• Guyana received $414 million, down from $423 the year before. The remittances, in most cases, are direct related to numbers of each country’s migrants living in foreign lands.

Significantly for some countries, remittances, according to the MIF, amounted to a high proportion of their GDP, and much more so for those with poorer economies. For Guyana it was 3