The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) said that the preliminary data showed that transfers of Egyptians working abroad increased by $261m in October 2019, at an annual growth rate of 12.7%, to record about $2.3bn compared to about $2.1bn during October 2018. The CBE said in a statement Wednesday that this resulted in an increase of those transfers during the period from July to October 2019 by about $1bn at an annual growth rate of 13.4% to record about $9bn compared to about $8bn during the period from July to October 2018. Remittances of Egyptians working abroad decreased to $25.2bn in the last fiscal year compared to about $26.4bn during 2017, a decrease of 4.7%, according to an earlier statement by the CBE on the balance of payments. In a recent report, the World Bank (WB) expected that the remittances flows of Egyptians abroad will reach $26.4bn by the end of 2019, making Egypt the fifth-largest beneficiary of remittances worldwide. A report by the WB, on its website, stated that remittance flows to low and middle income countries will reach $551bn in 2019, an increase of 4.7% compared to $529bn in 2018 and that it will continue to rise to $597bn by 2021. The report indicated that the first five countries to benefit from remittances for 2019 are India, China, Mexico, the Philippines, and Egypt. The report showed that remittance flow growth slowed to 4.7% in 2019, compared to a strong 8.6% in 2018. It explained that the cyclical factors that affect the growth of remittance flows are economic growth in source countries and changes in oil prices, and changes in the rate of remittances.
