Nicaragua Central Bank Reveals Diaspora Remittances Hit New Record, Exceed $4B

Nicaragua's Central Bank revealed Wednesday the remittances from Nicaraguan migrants to their home country broke records this year.

The bank shared that in the last 11 months, it has recorded $4.24 billion in remittances, which is 47% more compared to the previous year, Reuters reported.

The central bank also mentioned last month's remittances were 27.8% higher than that of November 2022.

"Remittances in the month of November totaled 395.4 million dollars, being 27.8% higher than the amount registered in the same month last year (US$309.5 million)," the official statement mentioned [according to Google Translate].

It added, "Of the total remittances received in the month, 82.7% came from the United States (US$327.1 million), 7.1% from Costa Rica (US$27.9 million), 6% from Spain (US$23.6 million), 1.1% from Panama (US$ 4.3 million) and 0.7% from Canada (US$2.8 million), which together represented 97.5% of the total."

The bank explained that the rise was mainly due to "the 58.9% increase in flows from the United States, equivalent to an additional 1,298.4 million dollars compared to the same period last year."

Furthermore, an increase was seen in the remittances from "Costa Rica (19.5%) and Spain (1.7%), among others; and decreases in remittance flows from Panama (-14.5%) and El Salvador (-6.3%)."

Last year, more than 300,000 Nicaraguans migrated across the world. The total number has surpassed 1.5 million (22% of the total Nicaragua population), according to the United Nations data analyzed by Dialogo Interamericano researcher Manuel Orozco.

In the last five years, the percentage of Nicaraguans willing to move out of the country has increased from 35% to almost 50%. According to a recent study, 50% of Nicaragua's population wants to leave the country due to a repressive government and economic decline.

Elizabeth Zechmeister, the director of AmericasBarometer, said a major chunk of the population had "already taken concrete steps to try to get out," revealing that 23% of the population said they were "very prepared" to emigrate.

People often migrate to other countries to get better economic opportunities, education, safety, better healthcare and quality of life.