Emigrants send less and less money to their relatives in Bulgaria, writes “Labor“.
In the first two months of the year, Bulgarian emigrants abroad sent a total of 24.8m euros. For the same period last year we received from Bulgarians abroad 198.2 million euros.
The decline in funds received from emigrants is exactly eight times. The reason for this is the crisis around the world.
Many Bulgarians abroad have lost their jobs and can no longer send money to their relatives. Others, due to stricter restrictive measures in other EU countries, chose to return to their homelands.
Some of them, who can work remotely, continue to earn money from foreign employers. However, they receive their salaries directly in Bulgaria and the BNB does not report the amounts as funds from emigrants.
The downward trend in the amount sent by emigrants began immediately after the declaration of the state of emergency in March last year.
Before the pandemic, about 100m euros of emigrants entered the country each month. In March last year, that amount fell to 40m euros, and in April to 14.2m euros. In the following months, there were slight fluctuations in the amount sent. But since November 2020, the money sent by emigrants has decreased to 11-12 million euros per month.
One year has passed since the declaration of the state of emergency in 2020. For this period, the money sent by emigrants is only 160 million euros. This is less than the amount we received in just two months before Covid-19. For comparison, in the 12 months before the declaration of the state of emergency, the money received by the emigrants was 1.23 billion euros.
Before the pandemic, emigrants’ money was more than foreign direct investment in the country. But this is no longer the case. Foreign direct investment decreased by 57% and for the first two months of the year amounted to 98.6 million euros. This is almost four times more than the money sent by emigrants.
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