Q24N (EFE) Nicaraguans received US$647.6 million dollars between January and February 2023 from family remittances from abroad, 63.2% more than in the same period of 2022, the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN) reported this Wednesday.
In the first two months of 2022, Nicaragua received US$396.9 million dollars in remittances, US$250.7 million dollars less than the amount received in the first two months of 2023, the state issuing bank said in a report.
“The dynamism of remittances continues to be explained mainly by the growth of flows from the United States (92.5%) and Costa Rica (14.1%),” highlighted the Central Bank.
Of the total remittances received between January and February 2023, 80.8% of the flows came from the United States (US$523 million dollars); followed by Costa Rica, with 8% (US$51.9 million), and Spain, with 6.6% (US$42.6 million), followed by, according to official information.
Then they are followed, by Panama (1.3%) and Canada (0.7%), which together with the US, Costa Rica and Spain represented 97.4% of the total received between January and February. of 2023.
Nicaragua captured a new record of US$3.22 billion dollars in remittances in 2022, 50.2% more than a year earlier, according to official figures.
Remittances represent 20.5% of Nicaragua’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In recent years, thousands of Nicaraugnas have fled their country, escaping poverty and repression under an increasingly authoritarian government, headed mainly to the United States.
Between January 1 and December 31, 2022, a total of 217,052 Nicaraguans were detained at the southern border of the United States, according to data from the U.S. Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The figure is the highest since Nicaragua’s civil war in the 1980s.
Nearly 20% of the total population of Nicaraguan origin, estimated at 6.7 million, lives abroad, mainly in the United States and Costa Rica, and it is estimated that half of them do so undocumented.
