India continued to be the world’s top recipient of remittance from its diaspora, gathering $69 billion in 2017 – nearly 1.5 times India’s defence budget for 2018-19 – an increase of 9.5 percent from the previous year, according to World Bank data.
Remittances to India from its diaspora increased 22 times to $69 billion in 2017 from $3 billion in 1991, but as a proportion to the gross domestic product (GDP) fell 1.2 percentage points to 2.8 percent in six years to 2017. Such remittances increased nine times worldwide to $613 billion during the same period.
