Immigrant flows reach a record of 510 million euros

2024-09-11 07:40:00, Ekonomi CNA

Immigrant flows reach a record of 510 million euros

Illustrative photo, taken from Google

The money that immigrants bring to their relatives has marked a historical record, at least since 2008, when the data are reported by the Bank of Albania.

According to the Bank, in the first 6 months of the year, remittances from immigrants reached 510 million euros, with an increase of 14.4% compared to the same period of the previous year.

Since 2021, the money that emigrants send to their relatives in Albania has shown continuous growth, reflecting the revival of a new wave of emigration, which started in the country after 2016.

The previous wave peaked in 2009 and after that year remittances began to decline steadily, reflecting the gradual departure of immigrants from the mother country that usually occurs after 15-20 years, as they start their own families and gradually sever ties with the mother country.

But, since 2017, remittances started to grow again, in line with the new cycle of immigration (in 2016, a record level of asylum requests was recorded at around 60,000).

Source: Bank of Albania

After a reduction until 2020, also influenced by the pandemic, 2022 marked a new peak of immigration, where asylum requests reached 30,000, most of them in the United Kingdom. In 2023-2024, the trend of asylum applications has decreased, but departures continue based on work contracts, or as young refugees attract their relatives and friends.

In the new channels in recent years, in addition to the traditional ones like Italy and Greece, there were also France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Sources from local money transfer operators said that Germany and England are new corridors, compared to the traditional ones, and have a better performance in the trend of sending money to their relatives in Albania.

The latest data of the 2023 census found that the population of Albania decreased to 2.4 million inhabitants, or 420 thousand inhabitants less than the 2011 Census, mainly influenced by the high rates of emigration.

Even according to Eurostat, since 2008, when the earliest Eurostat data is reported, the countries of the European Union have granted a total of 832,000 residence permits to Albanian citizens./ Monitor.al