World Bank says remittances to Ukraine anticipated to increase more than 20 percent this year

The World Bank said in a brief released Wednesday that remittances to Ukraine are anticipated to increase more than 20 percent in 2022 against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of its neighboring country.

“Just as the [low- and middle-income countries] were starting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the war on Ukraine erupted, altering the global landscape for migration and remittances. Remittances to Ukraine are expected to rise by over 20 percent in 2022,” the World Bank said in its Migration and Development Brief. 

However, the brief noted that a number of nations in Central Asia are expected to experience the opposite, saying that “remittance flows to many Central Asian countries (for which the main source is Russia) are expected to fall dramatically.”

The World Bank said that Ukrainian workers sending money back home could save millions of dollars if remittance fees were lowered by 2 percentage points, noting that sending remittances to Ukraine was costly even before the conflict started.

“Even before the war and the sanctions, the cost of sending money to Ukraine was high, ranging from 4.3 percent in Italy to 6.5 percent in Germany and 7.1 percent in the Czech Republic,” the brief said. “Reducing the fees on remittances by 2 percentage points could save Ukrainian migrants $400 million per year. If costs are reduced further, the savings could be even higher.”

This comes after the Russian invasion has lasted more than two months. Figures from the U.N. refugee agency show that more than 6 million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the conflict.