TIRANA, June 13 – Migrant remittances dropped for a third quarter in a row as the economic recovery in neighboring Italy and Greece, the country’s top trading partners and the hosts of about 1 million Albanians, remains uncertain.
A report by the country’s central bank shows migrant remittances dropped to €128 million in the first quarter of this year, down from €154 million in the final quarter of 2015 and €162 million in the first three months of 2015, registering an annual decline of 21 percent.
The double digit decline in remittances seems to have been fuelled by ongoing uncertainties in neighboring Greece whose economy could not escape recession in the first quarter of this year when it contracted by an annual 1.4 percent, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
Meanwhile, the Italian economy showed signs of recovery in the first quarter of the year when it grew by 1 percent with a positive impact on some 500,000 Albanian migrants living and working in the neighboring country across the Adriatic.
In its latest Spring report, the European Commission expects the Italian economy to slightly recover between 1.1 and 1.3 percent in the next couple of years after a 0.8 percent GDP growth in 2015 when it returned to positive growth after three years of contraction. Neighboring Greece which escaped its six-year recession only in 2014 is expected to slightly contract by 0.3 percent in 2016 before returning to moderate growth rate of 2.7 percent in 2017.
Migrant remittances registered a slight recovery in 2015 when they rose to €598 million, up only €6 million compared to 2014 apparently affected by the escalation of the crisis in neighboring Greece and restrictions imposed on banking transactions there.
Despite a slight recovery, remittances remained almost 40 percent below their peak level of €952 mln in 2007 just before the onset of the global financial crisis, according to revised data published by the country’s central bank.
The sharp cut in remittances, one of the main sources of revenues for thousands of households, has considerably affected domestic consumption and the construction sector which has been paralyzed facing lack of demand and a stock of unsold apartments following a pre-crisis boom.
In addition to crisis impacts, experts say remittances will continue to decline on social factors because most immigrants are creating their own families abroad and often even taking their parents with them.
