Remittances on steady track

Remittance inflows amounted to US$500 million for the first two months of the year, which was flat compared to year-earlier levels.

“Jamaica’s growth of 0.1 per cent is in contrast to growth of 3.8 per cent, 8.2 per cent and 1.5 per cent recorded by Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, respectively,” said the Bank of Jamaica in the monthly BOJ Remittance Bulletin for February.

Remittance inflows totalled US$246 million and US$253.6 million in January and February, respectively. January dipped 1.1 per cent compared to year-earlier levels while the flows in February improved by 1.3 per cent.

Remittances, which are gifts in the form of cash, account for the largest pool of funds flowing into Jamaica, and rival the inflows from the tourism sector.

Jamaicans mainly receive remittances from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and the Cayman Islands. These flows are often used for consumption and serve to augment the cost of living for many Jamaicans.

For the 2023 calendar year, remittances declined by two per cent to US$3.13 billion to Jamaica, marking the largest slide in money transfers in at least a decade, according to Bank of Jamaica data. The dip equated to US$67 million from the US$3.2 billion recorded in 2022. But it was also the second consecutive year of declines in remittances. Remittances climbed to a historic high of US$3.5 billion in 2021, due to changing market conditions and restrictions under the pandemic that pushed more remitters to utilise the formal means of money transfers. Since then, the market has seen two years of shrinkage – to US$3.44 billion in 2022 and US$3.37 billion in 2023.

The fallout in 2023 bucked the regional trend, with the World Bank noting in its remittance report, called the Migration and Development Brief, that flows to Latin America and the Caribbean were estimated to have risen by 8.0 per cent to US$156 billion that year.

– Steven Jackson