Egyptian expats’ remittances recorded $250.3 billion in the past 10 years, from FY 2011/2012 through FY 2019/2020, reported the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) on Monday.
The figure accounts for 31.7 percent of Egypt’s net international reserves.
During this period, remittances went up and down, recording a high of $27.8 billion in FY 2019/20 and a low of $12.6 billion in FY 2010/11.
Remittances registered an 8.5 percent increase from July 2020 to March 2021, to reach $23.4 billion, up from $21.5 billion in the same period of 2020, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) announced in June.
However, they declined to $7.8 billion in the first three months of 2021, down from $7.8 billion in the same period of 2020, amid the pandemic crisis, stated the CBE.
Remittance inflows and tourism revenues are expected to fall further as the full impact of the pandemic shock increases in FY 2020/21, Fitch Rating said in March.
Fitch added that the CBE’s net foreign assets, amounting to $13 billion in January, remain widely lower than its gross reserves.
In FY 2019/20, Egypt was one of the top five receivers of remittances globally.
In October 2020, the World Bank (WB) expected that global remittances would decrease by 14 percent in 2021 than in 2019, driven by the COVID-19 shock.
Remittance inflows to low- and middle-income countries, where the WB classifies Egypt, were projected to drop by seven percent, to reach $508 billion in 2020, followed by a further decline of 7.5 percent, to post $470 billion in 2021, according to the WB.
Trading Economics (TE) projected Egypt’s remittances to significantly hike to $73 billion in 2022 and $75 billion in 2023.
