Bulgaria Received USD 830 M in Remittances from Turkey in 2014

Bulgarian migrants working in Turkey sent some USD 830 M (EUR 732 M) back home in 2014, much more than the sum flowing from the next "top 11" countries in the list combined, data from the TIME magazine shows.

The amount of roughly BGN 1.430 B is equal to about 1.7% of the country's GDP.  

A world map, with data provided by the World Bank Group, shows results for most countries, reveals Turkey is followed in the list by Spain, remittances from which are substantially lower: just USD 198 M (EUR 174 M).

Next are Germany (USD 113 M), the United States (USD 97 M), the UK (USD 74 M), Italy (USD 72 M), Greece (USD 68 M), Belgium (USD 31 M), Canada (USD 24 M), the Netherlands (USD 23 M), Austria (USD 22 M), and France (USD 21 M).

Respectively, the BGN 2.710 B from these twelve countries are tantamount to nearly 3.3% of the gross domestic output.

As for other Southeast European countries, the sums flowed into Bulgaria from them in 2014 were bigger only in the cases of Serbia (USD 2 M) and Macedonia (USD 1 M). Smaller amounts are marked as "negligible".

Official statistics dating 2014 suggest 2.5 Bulgarians were working abroad as of the previous year. Most of them have moved to Western countries or to Turkey over the past few decades, with migration spurred in particular by the economic hardship many faced in the years after communism failed in 1989.