United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

This Dataset presents time series on receipts and payments of personal remittances in millions of dollars. These data are also shown as percentage of exports (receipts) and imports (payments) of goods and services, and as percentage of GDP. Personal remittances, as defined in this table, comply with the guidelines of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, Sixth Edition (BPM6) (IMF 2009, Appendix 5). They are the sum of two items: (1.) compensation of employees, defined as the income of workers employed in an economy where they are not resident and of residents employed by non-resident employers; (2.) personal (current) transfers, defined as current transfers in kind or in cash, between resident and non-resident households (ibid., A5.5-7). A broader definition of personal remittances would include also capital transfers between resident and non-resident households (ibid., A5.10-13). However, data coverage for capital transfers is much sparser than for the two items above, as compilation of this item by countries is voluntary in the context of the balance of payment statistics. Therefore, capital transfers between resident and non-resident households are reported in this table separately. The main source of personal remittances data is World Bank. In cases of missing data, data from IMF or Economic Intelligence Unit have been imputed. Capital transfers data have been taken from IMF.