BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 7
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted remittance flows in the world, with Georgia being no exception, Trend reports with reference to Policy and Management Consulting Group (PMCG) International development company.
The amount of inflows in Georgia started declining in March, saw a sharp decline in the month of April, showed the first signs of recovery in May and fully returned to the previous figures in June.
The analysis of monthly dynamics by country reveals that remittance inflows from Russia to Georgia experienced the biggest drop in April: a decline of 48 percent compared to the previous month. However, Russia also saw the biggest increase in June (65 percent) compared to the other top sender countries.
Inflows from Italy have started to decline earlier, falling by 20 percent in March and 23 percent in April month over month, while it recovered rapidly in May by 106 percent month-on-month.
"Georgia has recovered from the sharp drop in April relatively quickly, and the overall dynamics for 2020 are much stronger than predicted by IMF for Georgia and even stronger compared to the global estimates of the World Bank. However, the high growth figures in June could be explained by the higher demand for money due to the crisis. If this is the case, it is unlikely that the strong growth will continue," the reports says.
The second wave of the pandemic and further disruptions in the host countries of the migrants, could result in another sharp fall, the company added.
"Overall, uncertainty is still prevalent; however, so far, the remittance inflows in Georgia have been better than anticipated before, which translates to the hopes of quicker and stronger recovery," PMCG noted.
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