Remittances to Latvia, payments made by emigrants back to their home country, are expected to reach a record USD 787 million this year, according to data compiled by the World Bank and released in October.

That would be a 7.8 percent increase from 2012, when emigrants from Latvia sent back about USD 730 million. Large numbers of emigrants from Latvia are found in a number of countries, but chiefly in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as the Russian Federation, the United States, Germany, Israel, Canada, Australia, Lithuania and Sweden, according to the bank’s Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011.

The amount of remittances to Latvia has increased steadily since 1996, the first year the World Bank has data about the country. Only in 2009 did remittances temporarily retreat.

This year the remittances are expected to account for 2.6 percent of Latvia’s Gross Domestic Product, according to the World Bank.

Remittances from immigrants in Latvia back to their home countries are estimated to reach USD 64 million by the end of this year, an increase of 36 percent from 2012.

Emigrants from Lithuania will send back more than USD 1.8 billion in remittances this year, or 3.6 percent of that country’s GDP, the World Bank data show. Meanwhile, emigrants from Estonia are expected to send back USD 451 million, or 1.8 percent of GDP.

The migration and remittances data are available from the World Bank’s website.

(Graphic by Andris Straumanis. Source: World Bank.)