According to the World Bank’s “Migration and Development Brief 34: Resilience COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens” report, the global economy’s remittance flows contracted by 2.4% in 2020 to $702 billion in comparison with $719 billion in 2020. The World Bank, however, commented that remittance flows were resilient to the COVID-19 pandemic, citing the low actual contraction (2.4%) in comparison with predictions of a 7.0% drop for the year 2020 in the previous report and the 5.1% witnessed contraction during the 2009 financial crisis. The report highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic aided in the digitization of the remittance industry, where remittance flows via digital channels increased remarkably. In details, the World Bank pointed out that as a result of the imposed lockdowns, money transfer operators posted a double digit growth in digital services as opposed to a sizeable drop in cash remittance flows. From another standpoint, the bulk (about 77.6%) of global remittance flows is likely to be channelled to low and middle income countries (LMICs) in the year 2021, as has been the case since at least the year 2010. In details, the World Bank foresaw that the majority of these flows will be directed to the South Asia ($152 billion; <27.5%>) and East Asia & Pacific ($139 billion; <25.1%>) regions. In this context, the report anticipated remittances to LMICs to recover from the 1.6% drop registered in 2020 to a 2.6% growth in 2021 to $553 billion and a 2.2% growth in 2022 to $565 billion. On a regional basis, the World Bank estimated that remittance inflows to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region rose by 2.3% in 2020 to $56 billion, and projected these flows to further increase by 2.6% in 2021 to $57 billion and by 3.1% in 2022 to $59 billion. The report attributed the relatively weak growth in remittance flows to the MENA region in 2021 to the moderate growth in the euro area and weak GCC outflows.

Locally, the report estimated remittance flows to Lebanon at $6.2 billion in 2020 ($6.9 billion in 2019), positioning the country 3^rd in the MENA region in terms of size of remittance inflows, only behind Egypt ($29.6 billion) and Morocco ($7.4 billion). However, Lebanon ranked 1^st in the MENA region and second globally (behind Tonga “37.7%”) in terms of remittance contribution to GDP, which stood at 32.2% in 2020, followed by the West Bank & Gaza (17.1% of GDP). Furthermore, the World Bank commented that the average cost of sending remittances to Lebanon from high-income OECD nations remains elevated.