LIMA, PERU — Remittance flows to Latin America and the Caribbean will drop by 11 per cent in 2009 to $62bn, the lowest level since 2006, according to research carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank. ‘The decline will have a direct effect on more than 1m households in Latin America and the Caribbean, half of which are in Mexico, says the IDB report, published on Tuesday. El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti and Nicaragua – all countries with greater dependence on the export of manual labour – are among those worst hit. Ecuador, a dollarised economy which has a high proportion of workers living in Spain and in the US, has also been particularly hard hit. It has seen a 22 per cent decline in remittances in the last quarter of 2008 and a 27 per cent fall in the first quarter of 2009, according to Robert W. Meins, remittances specialist at the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Mr Meins said the outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean region could be even more bleak, with a decline of 12.4 per cent, or $8.5bn (€6bn, £5.2bn) for 2009, given the region’s strong links with the US and […]