Expats in Spain sent $10bn back home last year

Money makes the world go round… and expats are sending a lot of it back home.

Spain’s economy has long been powered in part by the millions of non-Spaniards who work in the country to enjoy its varied industry, EU protections and excellent lifestyle.

But data recently published by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has revealed that some of the country’s internal wealth is finding its way to foreign countries by migrant workers sending money home to family.

In 2014, the IFAD calculates that $9.6 billion (€8.6 billion) was sent by migrant workers overseas, putting the country near to the top of the charts when it comes to redistributing cash and capital around the world…

These ‘remittances’ are largely used to cover basic goods such as food, clothing, shelter, medicine and education, and migrants from a wide background of countries all play their part in this wealth redistribution.

“Remittance payments can make up 50 percent of a family’s income – at the least,” said IFAD head of remittances programme Pedro de Vasconcelos. “They need this money in order to sustain the family, send kids to school, have shelter and food. And hopefully have some to save and invest.”

According to IFAD, Brits working abroad are the second-largest group to send money back home, steering $17.1 billion back to the UK from foreign countries in 2014. Only expat Russians sent more money home globally – a whopping $20.6 billion. Germans working abroad produced remittance packages totalling $14 billion last year, followed by French nationals ($10.5 billion) and then Italians ($10.4 billion).

In Spain, Latin Americans – those hailing from Argentina, Peru and Ecuador, and also the Caribbean – sent the most money home ($3.5 billion), followed by people from Africa ($2.9 billion). By country, the single-biggest benefactor of Spain-earned wages was Morocco, which welcomed $1.7 billion in remittance payments last year, followed by China, with $1.07 billion.

In terms of proportion, a massive 38% of all remittance payments received in Ecuador came from Spain, which means the country is more reliant on its expats working in Spain than any other in the world.

Despite that $10 billion figure appearing rather high, the figures are a mere drop in the ocean on a wider economic scale, and do not represent a “significant outflow of wealth”, said the IFAD report. For Spain, $10 billion is just 0.7 per cent of the national GDP.

Across Europe, $109.4 billion was sent around the globe by workers in the EU, which overall helped to offer financial support for more than 150 million people globally. A third of this sum stayed within Europe, heading mostly to Poland, Romania and Ukraine, the report added.