BEIRUT: The World Bank estimated remittances into Lebanon at $7 billion in 2009, or nearly 22 percent of the entire MENA’s remittances. In an update its 2009 edition of the “Migration and Remittances FactBook,” the World Bank said that contrary to previous expectations by the World Bank and the IMF, which indicated that remittances into Lebanon would probably plummet by around 12 percent as a result of an economic slowdown in Gulf countries, current evidence, after ten months of the year have elapsed suggest that remittances flowing into Lebanon have in fact remained solid in 2009 and have dropped only marginally, by 2.5 percent, from the record high of $7,180 million in 2008. 

This report was published by Bank Audi’s Weekly Monitor. 

The report added that all 210 countries examined by the World Bank in this update suffered from a decline in remittance flow, and Lebanon was among the very few countries that witnessed a trivial decline below 3 percent. 

The projected decline in Lebanon’s remittances compares to a significant decline in remittances into the MENA in 2009, bearing in mind that the report noted that empirical data suggest that remittances flowing into the MENA region in the first half of 2009 have dropped by 20 percent. 

It also compares to a decrease of 9.9 percent in remittances to upper middle-income countries and a drop of 5.3 percent in global remittances. 

Among the 12 MENA countries observed in the report, Lebanon ranked second in terms of remittances received, following Egypt, which ranked first with a total of $7.8 billion in remittances, in 2009. It came in ahead of Morocco ($5.7 billion), Jordan ($3.7 billion), Sudan ($3.1 billion), Algeria ($2.2 billion), Tunisia ($1.9 billion) and Yemen ($1.4 billion). 

Lebanon’s remittances constituted 21.7 percent of inward remittances into the MENA region as a whole, with the latter forecasted to reach $32.2 billion in 2009. 

Among the 210 countries examined by the World Bank, Lebanon came in the 16th spot, which is quite important for a relatively small country. 

As a percentage of GDP, Lebanon has the highest share of remittances among its regional peers of 21.4 percent in 2009. In fact, Lebanon ranked among the top ten recipients of remittances as a share of GDP, coming in the seventh place. 

This highlights the hefty magnitude of remittance flow into the country especially when looked at within the context of the country’s size, its population and the size of its economy. 

The report noted that remittances into the MENA region in late 2008 and 2009 were severely affected by the global crisis, and it seems that once again Lebanon has bucked the regional trend, with its remittances rising significantly in 2008 and remaining stable in 2009. 

Inward remittances into Lebanon in 2008 have been better than expected, at $7.180 billion in 2008, up from a previous World Bank estimate of $6.0 billion. 

This means that in 2008, remittances flowing into Lebanon went up by 24.0 percent from $5.769 billion in 2007, 38.0 percent from $5.202 billion in 2006, and 45.8 percent from $4.924 billion in 2005. – The Daily Star