With 2.8 million emigrants and USD 4.5 bln remittances, Romania ranks among World Bank migration countries

Romania ranks 18th out of 30 countries listed in the World Bank Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011 (read the report below), with 2.8 million emigrants, close to Indonesia, with 2.5 million. The percentage of emigrants of the total population in Romania is of 13.2 percent. Romania is also among the top remittance-receiving countries, with an estimated USD 4.5 billion for this year, ranking 22nd out of 30 countries. The peak in terms of remittances sent by Romanian workers abroad was reached in 2008, with USD 9.3 billion. Romanians started to work abroad and send more money home starting 2003, when USD 124 million were sent to the country. The top remittance-receiving country this year is India, with USD 55 billion for 2010. Romania ranks close to Australia, which receives USD 4.3 billion of remittances from its citizens abroad. The country is also in the top ten remittances-receiving countries in Europe. As a percentage of the GDP, the remittances don't put Romania in the top 30, where the smallest percentage of the GDP is of 7 percent, in the Dominican Republic. The top destination countries for Romanian emigrants are Italy, Spain, Hungary, Israel, the United States, Germany, Canada, Austria, France, the United Kingdom. The skilled emigration reaches 6.9 percent of physicians trained in the country, according to the World Bank report. Romania is also home to 132,000 immigrants, mainly from Moldova, Bulgaria, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the Syrian Arab Republic, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany. The outward remittances sent by these people to their home countries reached USD 310 million last year, down compared to USD 664 in 2008. Read below the report on migration. editor@romania-insider.com [issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xml backgroundcolor=FFFFFF showflipbtn=true documentid=101109161834-e00589e05c4647449c92d65b50e50e39 docname=9780821382189 username=World.Bank.Publications loadinginfotext=Migration%20And%20Remittances%20Factbook%202011 showhtmllink=true tag=remittances width=600 height=450 unit=px]