Bank of Italy - Foreign workers' remittances

The data on foreign workers' remittances report the transfers of money sent abroad by foreign workers by means of payment institutions or other authorized intermediaries without using bank accounts (settlement in cash).

Published data are updated quarterly; since 2016 data are available on a quarterly basis with the breakdown by receiving foreign country; on an annual basis they are available with the additional detail of the Italian province where the sender is located.

Data

Foreign workers' remittances in 2024

In the fourth quarter of 2024, workers' remittances sent abroad by foreign residents in Italy increased by 0.9 per cent compared with the same period of the previous year (Table 1).

Annual growth was equal to 1.3 per cent; increases in flows towards Asia (+3.8 per cent) and North Africa and the Near East (+7.6 per cent) more than offset the decline in remittances sent to sub-Saharan Africa (-7.6 per cent) and European Union countries (-7.0 per cent; Table 1).

In 2024, the three main recipient countries of remittances from Italy were Bangladesh, which further increased its share of the total flow to 16.9 per cent, Pakistan (7.2 per cent) and Morocco, which confirmed its share of 6.9 per cent, marginally exceeding that of the Philippines (Table 2).

The regions with the largest increase in remittance outflows compared to 2023 were Campania and Lazio. Almost half of the remittances sent abroad came from the three most important regions in terms of flows: Lombardy (21.9 per cent of the total), Lazio (15.3 per cent) and Emilia-Romagna (10.0 per cent; Table 3). The main contributions to the overall growth were due to flows to Bangladesh, in particular from the provinces of Naples and Rome (Figure 1).

Table 1: Foreign workers’ remittances

(millions of euros, percentage changes, percentage shares)

Table 1