plate 044 · 2025 data
Migrants now send home four times all foreign aid
Remittances to low- and middle-income countries vs total aid from rich donors, US$ billion.
Trade and money rewired
- 1. Mexico, not China, now sells America the most goods
- 2. China's ASEAN trade is now almost double its US trade
- 3. Central banks now hold more gold than Treasuries or euros
- 4. China now pays the world mostly in yuan
- 5. Migrants now send home four times all foreign aid
- 6. Tether now holds more US Treasuries than the UAE
- 7. Developing countries' interest bill has nearly tripled since 2010
- 8. America's duty-free parcels grew almost tenfold in nine years
- 9. Poles edge past the Japanese in income per person
- 10. In dollars, Nigeria's economy has more than halved since 2014
- 11. Argentina's monthly inflation fell from 25.5% to 1.9%
- 12. Guyana now produces more per person than America
- 13. Mexico's factories now outproduce Britain's and France's
- 14. Ukraine received four times the aid of any other country
- 15. The UAE sold more goods abroad than France in 2025
- 16. Singapore now draws twice as much foreign investment as China
- 17. The EU now buys more US gas than Russian gas
- 18. Malaysia again sells more to America than to China
- 19. 22 governments now owe more than a year's national output
- 20. Brazil mines 93% of the world's niobium
- 21. More Vietnamese now work in industry than on farms
- 22. Money sent home to Guatemala nearly quadrupled in ten years
- 23. In purchasing power, Russia's economy is now bigger than Japan's
- 24. Indonesia set to use more palm oil than it exports
- 25. Factories now make more of Cambodia's economy than China's
$729bn
Migrants sent $729 billion home to developing countries in 2025, up 67% since 2016.
−23%
Rich-country aid fell 23% in real terms in 2025, to $174 billion.
10×
Egypt received $36.5bn in remittances in FY2024/25, ten times its Suez Canal revenue.
Source:
World Bank/KNOMAD Migration and Development Briefs; IFAD Sending Money Home 2026; OECD DAC preliminary ODA 2025, 2025
the numbers & method
| Year | Remittances (bn) | Foreign aid (DAC) (bn) |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 435 | |
| 2017 | 475 | |
| 2018 | 522 | |
| 2019 | 548 | |
| 2020 | 542 | |
| 2021 | 601 | |
| 2022 | 651 | |
| 2023 | 647 | |
| 2024 | 685 | 215 |
| 2025 | 729 | 174 |
Claim types Fact
2025 remittances from IFAD. Aid = total DAC donor ODA (not aid received by developing countries only). Egypt figures from the Central Bank of Egypt (fiscal year Jul–Jun). Corrected 3 Nov 2026: title shortened to 10 words or fewer; no change to the data.
Published 27 Oct 2026
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