| By: |
Robert Shelburne (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe);
Jose Palacin (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) |
| Abstract: |
Migrant remittances are an increasingly important type of international
financial flow for providing both additional resources for development as well
as consumption expenditures for poverty alleviation. One geographical area
where these flows are quite significant is in the CIS economies both in terms
of their sheer size as well as their economic importance in providing a source
of external finance for the recipient countries. Data on remittances
generally, but especially in this region, are often of poor reliability due to
the fact that these flows often move through unofficial and unmonitored
channels. Data for the CIS are limited in that several countries do not
provide this information in their balance of payment statistics and in those
that do, it is often only partially reported and poorly collected or
estimated. In this paper the characteristics, trends, and importance of
remittances in the CIS are discussed and a new approach for estimating
remittance flows in the CIS is developed based upon a new set of financial
data recently released by the Central Bank of Russia and unpublished data
obtained from the central banks of Kazakhstan, Moldova and Ukraine. |
| Keywords: |
remittances, migration, CIS, Russia, external finance, financial flows |
| JEL: |
P25 G21 R31 |
| Date: |
2007–10 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ece:dispap:2007_5&r=cis |