Balance of payments remittance data captures transfers made through formal channels. Where a fixed official rate creates a gap against what a sender can obtain elsewhere, the compilers' own manual says that gap penalises the official channel. Egypt's recorded remittances fell by about a third and later rose by about two thirds.
A remittance statistic is not a count of money sent home. It is a count of money sent home through a channel that files a return. When the exchange rate makes that channel the expensive one, the money keeps coming and the statistic falls. Egypt has run the cycle twice in a decade, and the second time is documented well enough to follow step by step.
Key Takeaways
- Balance of payments remittance data captures formal channels and largely misses informal ones.
- The compilers' own manual says an exchange rate wedge penalises sending through official channels.
- Egypt's recorded remittances fell by about a third across 2022/23 and stayed at the floor for two years.
- The IMF attributed the fall to foreign exchange being diverted away from the official market.
- After unification in March 2024, the first full year recorded an increase of about 65 per cent.
What the number is made of
The people who compile it are candid about its limits.
The reference work is the guide for compilers and users of remittance statistics, published jointly by the IMF, the OECD, Eurostat and the World Bank. Its foreword, signed by the statistics directors of all four, says that the quality of statistical remittance data is not high, and that remittances are a challenge to measure because they are heterogeneous, made up of numerous small transactions conducted by individuals through a wide variety of channels.
The guide separates three kinds of channel. Formal ones are officially authorised to operate in money transfer, such as banks and registered operators. Semi-formal ones are institutions providing transfer services outside a country's regulatory mechanisms. Informal ones sit outside financial regulation and supervision, and are often perfectly legal.
It is equally direct about the consequence: reliable data and information on unregulated remittance channels are lacking.
The mechanics of the informal systems explain why. In the arrangements the guide describes, money does not regularly cross a border at the time of a transfer, either physically or electronically. Instructions cross, obligations offset, and only the net position is ever settled. A compiler watching cross-border payments has nothing to watch.
Why the exchange rate decides the channel
Because it changes the price of using the reporting one, and the compilers say so.
The same guide states that exchange control restrictions create a wedge between the official exchange rate and the rate available elsewhere, and that those restrictions thereby essentially impose a penalty on migrants and short-term workers who remit funds through the official channel, contributing to the relative attractiveness of informal channels. Elsewhere it notes that under exchange control regimes unofficial operators may offer a more favourable rate, attracting senders away.
That is a general proposition in a methodology document, not a claim about any country. It is also the whole mechanism: a household deciding how to send money is choosing between two prices, and where the official one is held away from the other, the reporting channel is the one that costs more.
Nothing about the family's decision to send has changed. What changes is whether a statistician sees it.
What happened in Egypt, in the recorded numbers
The fall came first and it was large.
On the fiscal year basis the IMF publishes from central bank returns, private remittances ran USD 31.7 billion in 2021/22, then USD 21.9 billion in 2022/23 and USD 21.9 billion again in 2023/24. That is a fall of about USD 9.8 billion, close to a third, and then two years flat at the floor. The figure originally programmed for 2022/23 had been USD 34.0 billion.
The attribution is institutional rather than inferred. Writing in April 2024, the IMF recorded a sharp fall in remittances through banks, with foreign exchange being diverted away from the official market. The wording is worth noticing: remittances through banks, which is a statement about a channel and not about a flow.
The same report attributes the weakness to expectations, noting that a lack of portfolio and remittance flows likely reflected concerns about the future exchange rate path after the official exchange rate became fixed in February 2023. Egypt's own authorities said the same in their letter to the Fund, citing a sharp decline in remittances among the reasons a reserve target was missed.
What happened after the rate was unified
The exchange rate was unified on 6 March 2024, as part of a shift to a flexible regime and a liberalised foreign exchange system, alongside a substantial tightening of monetary policy and a large inward investment agreement announced days earlier.
The timing matters for reading the series. Unification fell in the final quarter of the 2023/24 fiscal year, which is why that year still records USD 21.9 billion and the change lands in the year after. Recorded remittances for 2024/25 were USD 36.2 billion, an increase of about USD 14.3 billion or 65 per cent.
| Fiscal year | Recorded private remittances |
|---|---|
| 2021/22 | USD 31.7 billion |
| 2022/23 | USD 21.9 billion |
| 2023/24 | USD 21.9 billion |
| 2024/25 | USD 36.2 billion |
The condition that produced the fall has not returned. Reporting in 2026, the IMF recorded that the spread between the official market rate and market-clearing measures remained closed throughout, with no reported foreign exchange demand backlogs at banks.
One thing should be said carefully. The IMF stated the diversion explicitly on the way down. On the way up it records a surge in remittances and record inflows without saying, in terms, that they returned to formal channels. Joining the two halves is this guide's reading of a mechanism the compilers describe in general, not a finding any institution has published.
The same pattern, eight years earlier
Egypt floated the pound on 3 November 2016, removing restrictions on banks setting their own rates and allowing the rate to be market determined. Before it, the IMF had described a parallel market and continuing foreign exchange shortages under a fixed official rate.
A year later the Fund wrote that liberalisation of the exchange rate had strengthened inflows from tourism, remittances and non-oil merchandise trade. Recorded remittances went from USD 16.7 billion in 2015/16 to USD 19.4 billion in 2016/17 and USD 24.6 billion in 2017/18.
That episode also contains the single most useful caution about the word recorded. The 2016/17 figure was first published as USD 17.3 billion and later stood at USD 19.4 billion, revised up by more than two billion dollars. The Fund's own projection for 2017/18, made in December 2017, was USD 18.6 billion; the figure seven months later was USD 24.6 billion.
The recorded recovery outran the compiler's first estimate of it. A remittance series is not only incomplete, it is provisional.
Reading a remittance figure without being misled
Three habits follow from all of this.
Check the basis before comparing. Egypt's figures exist on two: a fiscal year ending 30 June, which the IMF publishes, and a calendar year, which the World Bank publishes. They give different levels and put the turning point in different years, because a calendar year captures months after March 2024 that the fiscal year mostly does not. Neither is wrong and mixing them produces nonsense.
Do not treat two sources as two measurements. Both series trace to the same compiler, the central bank, in two presentations. Agreement between them is consistency, not corroboration.
Read a fall as a channel event until something rules that out. A drop in recorded remittances is consistent with less money being sent, and equally consistent with the same money arriving another way. The two look identical in the series and differ entirely in what they mean.
Where to look next
The AUD to EGP page carries the live reference rate and a short block on what kind of money the pound is. For what an official rate held away from a market rate does more broadly, what it takes to lift capital controls covers the exit from such an arrangement, and why two currency converters disagree sets out how source and timestamp change a published figure. The mid-market rate entry defines the reference the official and other rates are compared against.
Sources
- International Transactions in Remittances: Guide for Compilers and Users, IMF with the OECD, Eurostat and the World Bank, 2009 - the foreword's statement that the quality of remittance data is not high and that remittances are heterogeneous and conducted through a wide variety of channels; the definitions of formal, semi-formal and informal channels; the statement that reliable data on unregulated channels is lacking; that exchange control restrictions create a wedge between the official and other rates and thereby penalise remitting through the official channel; that unofficial operators may offer a more favourable rate; and the description of informal systems in which money does not regularly cross the border at the time of transfer
- International Monetary Fund, Arab Republic of Egypt, Country Report No. 24/98, April 2024 - the sharp fall in remittances through banks with foreign exchange diverted away from the official market; the attribution of weak remittance flows to concerns about the future exchange rate path after the official rate became fixed in February 2023; the balance of payments table carrying the private remittance series, sourced to the Central Bank of Egypt; the unification of 6 March 2024 and the shift to a flexible regime and liberalised system; and the authorities' own letter citing a sharp decline in remittances
- International Monetary Fund, Arab Republic of Egypt, Country Report No. 26/224, August 2026 - the balance of payments table carrying the 2024/25 outturn, and the record that the spread between the official market rate and market-clearing measures remained closed with no reported demand backlogs at banks
- International Monetary Fund, Arab Republic of Egypt, Country Report No. 17/17, January 2017 - the float of 3 November 2016, the removal of restrictions on banks setting their own rates, and the pre-float description of a parallel market and foreign exchange shortages
- International Monetary Fund, Arab Republic of Egypt, Country Report No. 18/14, January 2018 - that liberalisation of the exchange rate strengthened inflows from tourism, remittances and non-oil merchandise trade; and the first published figure for 2016/17 and the December 2017 projection for 2017/18
- International Monetary Fund, Arab Republic of Egypt, Country Report No. 18/213, July 2018 - the revised figure for 2016/17 and the figure for 2017/18, which together show the scale of revision
- World Bank, World Development Indicators, personal remittances received for Egypt - the calendar year series, on a different basis and a different definition from the fiscal year one
General information about how remittance statistics are compiled. Not financial advice, and not a recommendation of any product or institution. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.
Common questions
What does a remittance statistic actually count?
Transfers the compiler can see, which in practice means those passing through banks and registered money transfer operators. The compilers' own guide, published jointly by the IMF, OECD, Eurostat and the World Bank, states plainly that the quality of remittance data is not high, that remittances are heterogeneous and conducted through a wide variety of channels, and that reliable data on unregulated channels is lacking.
Why would an exchange rate change the number?
Because it changes which channel is worth using. The same guide says exchange control restrictions create a wedge between the official rate and the rate available elsewhere, which essentially imposes a penalty on people remitting through official channels and contributes to the attractiveness of informal ones. The money still arrives; it stops being counted.
What happened in Egypt?
Recorded remittances fell from USD 31.7 billion in the 2021/22 fiscal year to USD 21.9 billion in 2022/23, and stayed there in 2023/24. The IMF described a sharp fall in remittances through banks, with foreign exchange being diverted away from the official market, and separately attributed weakness to concerns about the future exchange rate path after the official rate became fixed in February 2023.
And after the rate was unified?
The exchange rate was unified on 6 March 2024, in the final quarter of the 2023/24 fiscal year. Recorded remittances for 2024/25, the first full year afterwards, were USD 36.2 billion, an increase of about 65 per cent on the year before. The IMF recorded in 2026 that the spread between the official rate and market-clearing measures had remained closed.
Had this happened before?
Yes, around the float of November 2016. The IMF wrote a year later that liberalising the exchange rate had strengthened inflows from tourism, remittances and non-oil trade. Recorded remittances rose from USD 16.7 billion in 2015/16 to USD 19.4 billion in 2016/17 and USD 24.6 billion in 2017/18.