Labor migrants are still a critical component in the economy of Tajikistan keeping many families at home above the poverty line.  

The latest Migration and Development Brief notes that remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached a record high in 2018.

Officially recorded annual remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reportedly reached US$529 billion in 2018, an increase of 9.6 percent over the previous record high of $483 billion in 2017.  

The report notes that as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2018, the top five recipients were  Tonga, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Haiti, and Nepal. 

After posting 22 percent growth in 2017, remittances to Europe and Central Asia (ECA) grew by an estimated 11.2 percent to US$59 billion in 2018, according to the report.  .  

Smaller remittance-dependent countries in the region, such as Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, have particularly benefited from the sustained rebound of economic activity in Russia, the primary destination of low-skilled migrants from these countries.

As a share of GDP, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are still leading the ECA countries, at about 35.1 percent and 32.2 percent, as remittances remained by far the biggest source of foreign currency earnings for these countries, the report says. 

Migration and Development Brief reports an update on migration and remittance flows as well as salient policy developments in the area of international migration and development.

The Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD) is a global hub of knowledge and policy expertise on migration and development.  It aims to create and synthesize multidisciplinary knowledge and evidence; generate a menu of policy options for migration policy makers; and provide technical assistance and capacity building for pilot projects, evaluation of policies, and data collection.

KNOMAD is supported by a multi-donor trust fund established by the World Bank. The European Commission, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Sweden’s Ministry of Justice, Migration and Asylum Policy, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) are the contributors to the trust fund.