Remittances, or the money migrant workers send home to their countries of origin, are finally recovering to pre-crisis levels. In 2010, remittance flows to developing countries reached $325 billion, and they are poised to continue growing sustainably through 2013, according to the World Bank’s latest Outlook for Remittance Flows 2011-13.

This is very good news for developing countries. For many of them, money sent by their migrant workers living abroad is a very important source of external financing –sometimes even higher than the revenues obtained from oil exports or tourism. Thanks to the money being made in the U.S. by their relatives, millions of Mexican families can put food at their tables, just as Indians and Filipinos benefit the same way from the remittances sent from rich and oil producing countries in the Middle East.

But there is no time to be complacent. Individuals dependent on remittances are not out of the woods yet. For example, remittance flows to Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, remained almost flat in 2010 because of the economic troubles in the U.S. and Western Europe. And although these flows started growing again in the first quarter of 2011, threats to the recovery remain.

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