Original links are included though some may have expired.

The Numbers:

Financial flows to Haiti, 2005:

Haiti GDP (exchange-rate basis):		$4.3 billion
Exports:		$392 million
Development aid:		$243 million (2004)
Foreign Direct Investment:		$10 million
Remittances from emigrants:		$1.077 billion

What They Mean:

Who moves the world? Governments? Businesses? Ordinary people? NGOs? The answer is a predictable mix of them all. But financial data for many developing countries suggest a remarkably large role for overseas workers. Some facts:

(1) Aid flows from governments, IMF & World Bank: According to the OECD, foreign aid from wealthy countries and multilateral agencies reached $106.5 billion in 2005. (It includes $27 billion in American aid, $55 billion from EU members, $13 billion from Japan and $2 billion from Australia and New Zealand. Norway was the world's highest giver relative to GDP.) The total has risen fast in recent years; it is now nearly double the $60 billion in aid during 2002, and would be still larger were the OECD statisticians to include the aid programs of Taiwan, China, Korea, and the Persian Gulf states.

(2) Private charities: Data on donations from NGOs are not yet available for 2005, but according to the World Bank, worldwide private charitable giving to foreign causes came to $13.8 billion in 2004. As Europe to official aid, so the United States to private charity: American charities accounted for $6.9 billion, or fully half the world's overseas private aid and relief donations. Again, though, the sum does not seem to include developing-country charities.

(3) FDI from businesses: The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development's annual FDI report, out last week, finds $780 billion in foreign direct investment from businesses during 2005, including $334 billion in FDI in "developing countries." In UNCTAD's somewhat odd definition, these include six very wealthy places: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Bermuda, and Israel. Excluding these high-income locales, developing-country FDI totaled $252 billion: $72 billion in mainland China, $180 billion everywhere else.

(4) Remittances from overseas workers: Remittances to developing countries from overseas workers came to $230 billion: twice the value of all foreign aid from all countries, and roughly equal to the value of all FDI in poor countries combined.

Placing remittances against other forms of aid, investment, and earnings can be startling. Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole received $5.7 billion in development aid in 2005, along with $33 billion in FDI -- and $54 billion in remittances. Likewise the Philippines' $10 billion in remittance flows are 20 times greater than the roughly $500 million in official aid, 10 times the country's $1.1 billion in FDI, and a quarter of the $41 billion in Filipino exports. The Haitian case is extreme, because of Haiti's low annual exports and FDI totals: the roughly 600,000 or so Haitian-Americans, whose household incomes average around $30,000 a year, manage to send over a billion dollars in cash to Haiti each year -- the equivalent of a quarter of Haiti's economy.

Aid, charity, FDI, and remittance figures, of course, go to different uses. Therefore they aren't precisely comparable. But it is still heartening (or sobering?) to find that humble people -- expatriate Filipina nurses, Haitian taxi drivers, Salvadoran construction workers, Thai cooks, Lebanese accountants -- do at least as much for their homelands' development and growth as the world's CEOs, aid administrators, and presidents.

Further Reading:

UNCTAD on FDI in 2005:
http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Page.asp?intItemID=1465

The OECD on the $106.5 billion in aid from rich countries (note that this does not include Muslim-world charities, or donations from mid-income Asia):
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/27/36418598.pdf

And recipients in developing countries:
http://www.oecd.org/countrylist/0,2578,en_2649_34447_
25602317_1_1_1_1,00.html

World Bank remittances page:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/
EXTFINANCIALSECTOR/EXTPAYMENTREMMITTANCE/
0,,contentMDK:20948545~pagePK:210058
~piPK:210062~theSitePK:1943138,00.html

IADB has a map with remittances to 23 Latin and Caribbean countries. Haiti is the exceptional case: the $1.1 billion in remittances from Haitians working in the United States and the Dominican Republic is four times Haiti's annual $243 million in foreign aid, 100 times its $10 million in FDI inflows, nearly triple Haiti's $400 million in annual exports -- and fully a quarter of Haiti's $4.3 billion GDP:
http://www.iadb.org/mif/remittances/

How it works -- a financial services firm solicits remittance business from Filipinos in the United States:
http://www.pnbrci.com/

The Brookings Institution reports on Miami's Haitian-American community:
http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20050901_haiti.pdf

The Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center on Biscayne Boulevard:
http://www.santla.org/