Diaspora breaks remittances record for eight months in Kosovo brought over 600m euros

From the Kosovo Central Bank data for August 2020, the diaspora has sent about 7m euros more than the same month of last year.

The data shows that in August 2020, 80.6m euros were brought to Kosovo, while a year earlier that value was 73.8m euros.

According to the delivery channels, the CEC says that about 60m euros have been transferred through the money shipment agencies, while the rest through commercial banks.

Comparing the seven-month period of the current year to that preliminary, it turns out that the exile in Kosovo has sent 53.5m euros more, or total to 606.6m euros.

As far as the shipments are concerned, Germany is the state where money is mostly sent towards Kosovo.

For the first quarter of 2020, it turns out that 42.4m euros have come from Germany, followed by Switzerland at 20.8m euros and the United States of America at 7.3m euros.

For this period, increased remittances are for 1.3 percent greater than 2019.

“Under the balance of payments, Foreign Direct Remissions and Investments marked annual growth of 1.3 per cent respectively of 60.5 per cent”, says the report “The quarterly assessment of macroeconomic developments, the first quarter of 2020”.

Kosovo Central Bank Governor Fehmi Mehmeti in an interview for Telegrafi had said that during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively, there is a decline in remittances.

He had warned that, the diaspora's failure to join Kosovo, risks not bringing another billion euros out of their spending.

If we refer to it last year, remittances have 875m euros in dogs or in relation to Bruto's domestic production are 12 percent. Our expectations are for remittances to drop by 14.1 percent this year. But we also have categories that the diaspora did in Kosovo, we call travel expenses, where this amount is about one billion euros. Their failure to come to Kosovo would jeopardise this amount of one billion euros”, Mehmeti had said.

Of the preliminary results of the diaspora census, the number of Kosovo citizens living in different countries in Europe and the world, which have responded to the census, is about 350,000.