Remesas

• Currently, almost 1 million Salvadorans live in the United States.
• El Salvador is the fifth largest remittance-receiving country in the region, and the second largest in terms of per capita amount ($411).
• Remittance inflows were much larger than ODA and FDI combined ($717 million in 2006) and represented 17.1% of Salvadorean GDP in 2005.
• Remittance flows have surpassed all main export revenues and equaled about 80% of total exports.
• El Salvador is one of the most competitive money transfer markets in the region due to its dollarized economy and the competition of large banks with companies as Western Union and Gigante Express.
• The four largest banks, Banco Agricola, Banco del Comercio, Banco Cuscatlán, and Banco Salvadoreño, have branches in the U.S. that operate money transfer services.
• Fedecaces, a credit union network, has entered the remittance market to focus on low-income households.

• More than 600,000 Guatemalan migrants live in the United States. Mexico is the second largest destination.
• Remittance inflows to Guatemala have increased dramatically to $3,610 billion in 2006, the fourth largest in the region and seventh largest in per capita terms ($287).
• Remittance inflows are far larger than ODA and FDI combined (totaled $373 million in 2004), and represent 9.3 % of Guatemala GDP in 2005.
• Remittances are the principal source of foreign currency, equal to 202 % of apparel exports, 344 % of tourism income, and 645 % of coffee exports in 2005.

• U.S. Census statistics show only about 375,000 Hondurans living in the United States, other estimates have ranged up to 800,000 or 1 million.
• Over the last few years, the remittance growth has been significantly higher than other external financial sources such as tourism, ODA and FDI.
• In 2004, remittances almost equaled twice the amount of ODA and FDI combined ($935 million), and in 2005 it represented 21.2 % of GDP.
• In 2005, remittance inflows equaled almost four times the revenue of the tourism sector and almost seven times that of Honduran main export products (coffee and bananas).
• Remittances equaled 70 % of the country’s total export revenues, while exceeding total agricultural exports.

Country snapshot: 

• Paraguay has a long history of migration to Argentina and Brazil.
• Around 300,000 Paraguayans were living in Argentina, according to their 2001 Census.
• Remittance trends are difficult to measure due to the lack of data available before 2004. In 2005, however, remittance inflows were eight times the total of FDI receipts and tourism.
• In 2005, remittances accounted for 7.2 % of Paraguayan GDP, and were almost equal to the revenues of its principal export, which is soya.
• In 2004, those inflows brought in seven and a half times the income from tourism.